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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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SPEECH 

or 

ME. JAENAGIN, OF TENNESSEE, 

H 

ON THE 

TREATY FOR THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 



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Delivered ia the Senate of the United States, in Executive Session, June 6, 1844. 



The Treaty annexing Texas to the United States, and also the resolutions offer- 
ed by the Senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) on that subject, being under 
consideration — 

Mr. Jarnagin said : I will ask the indulgence of the Senate while I submit 
the reasons which have determined me to vote against the Treaty now under 
discussion. Upon this subject, the first question to us, beyond all doubt, in mag- 
nitude as in sacredness, is the constitutionaiiiy of the act proposed to be done 
under the authority of the treaty-making power. For, after all, the rules of tnere 
national law are often violated with impunity for the sake of policy, personal in- 
terest, and national aggrandizement. We did not eslabli?h that code : it is, in 
many points, unsettled ; in others, we have refused to conform to it: but we are 
inextricably bound, by direct faith, to the principles we have deliberately set up 
for our guides at home and abroad. By con-imon avowal, no temporary good, 
however desirable in itself, can compensate a direct violation of the Constitution j 
for the latter extends over the whole future, and breaks down every security to 
us as a people. 

The Constitution has given, and could give, no such authority as that now 
assumed b}^ the treaty-making power. It is a strictly extra and ultra-constitu- 
lional one; for a Constitution is an agreement between the parlies to it. If it 13 
that of a single society, then the parties are the body of its citizens. If it is a 
compact between several societies, forming by it a federative league, it is these 
separately who make the parties to it. In either case, to introduce or exclude a 
member cannot be within the scope of the compact ; because it would vary the 
parties, and so terminate the agreement. The terms of the instrument itself 
coidd in no manner bestow a power contrary to this condition, inherent in the 
contract itself, and incapable of being excluded iVom it. Legally to alter these, 
the special assent of each party must precede the act. If done aibitrarity, with- 
out that assent, the act, though void in itself, may be rendered subsequently va- 
lid by the direct consent or ihe acquiescence of the original parties, who would 
thus, with the new meniber, form a new league, upon the terms of the old ; but, 
this done, it would be precisely as before. The fact just accomplished would 
only reinstate the same indefeasible conditions between new parties. It would 
bestow, no matter how often repeated, no power among the parties to act 
otherwise, as to a new change of those parties, than by the special assent of 
each to that change, to be given by the people themselves, according to the form 
they may prescribe. No act of this sort could, therefore, confer a power, or coa- 
stitute a precedent. This is the true answer to the alleged precedent of our aC' 



quisilion of Louisiana and Florida, which are now properly a part of the United 
iStates, upon the principles just declared. 

But even upon less comprehensive crrounds, these two facts confer no anllionty. 
Mr. Jefferson, the author, (it may be said,) because the originaior of boih avow- 
ed the one which he himself accomplished, to be unequivocally beyond the pow- 
ers of this Government by treaty, and urged that, to make it valid, ihe nation 
should ratify it by a constiuuional act, thereby gelling the consent of the people, 
and not alone that of the J>resident and Senate. He obviously proposed, how- 
ever, only a special confirmation, not the embodiment of any geneial piovision, 
or future rule or precedent, for the treaty-making power. ^1 hose acts then, were 
done in contemplation of a constitutional ratification, held by the author himself 
necessary to legalize them ; and that ratification has been neglected. If, then, 
resorted 'to as precedents, it is directly in the face of his authority, as they never 
were rendered constitutional, as he thought they woidd have to be icndeied but 
became valid by acquiescence. Besides, he wished to make of them special ca- 
ses lecriiimaiized by a subsequent consent, to cure a past wrong, not togive a ruture 
or furtlier authority. The act thus avowed, by its very authors, unconsi.luiional, 
and held ever since by the world to be so, is surely the very last that can be erect- 
ed into a constitutional precedent, and cannot be urged, with propriety, by those 
who now attempt to avail themselves of it ; for we have in our lusioiy many cases 
of acts done as constitutional, to which, as precedents, all authority is denied by 
them, and yet they here attempt to make a decisive precedent of that winch no 
man ever took to be constitutional al all! , ■ r 

The force of these reasons, even as slated in a far less conclusive form, is con- 
fessed by the many evasive methods Uiken to avoid them— ihis juggling of call- 
incr it " re-annexation," or that of pleading a political necessity, purely ticiilious, 
or some pretended engagement contracted, or right obtained l)y our having recog- 
nised the independence of Texas, or the slight-of-hand trick of bringing her in 
as a territory, not a State, by one branch of the Government alone. 1 hcse 
crrounds convey not only no .slisht avowal of the absence of any solid form ot 
doing the thing but by a resort U the people or their representatives but are 
subversive of all constitutional restraint, call in for their mslruments all sorts of 
violaiions of domestic and foreign obligations, remit for the purpose unbounded 
powers to the Executive, and are in many particulars directly in conHicl with 
each other, or with the motives or excuses alleged m behalf of other points m 
this scheme. We will examine them in their order. 

The term " re-annexaiion " is meant to convey the idea that we have, some 
how or other, a subsisting right lo the country of Texas, so that, not being a for- 
e\^n one, it can be legally incorporated in our Government. It is easy to sec 
ihat to the full extent^o which this supplies a cure for any constitutional difficul- 
ty it is fatal to other capital pretences set up or acts done. It utterly overthrows 
our own allegation that Texas is independent and capable of being a party to a 
treaty : it is in direct conflict with all the terms and objects of that instrument : 
it renders ridiculous our avowals to Mexico, and especially our final measure of 
buying her out : and as to our complaints of England and her internieddling, U 
points conclusively to what should have been our course— to let the British Go- 
vernment know that one of its public agents was making mischief under pre- 
tence of a Royal commi-ssion, in our territory, and that we received diplomatic 
personages here, and not in Texas. It is worse still as to Mexico. W ith her we 
acknowledge ourselves, in every way, to be stricdy at peace .we keep envoys at 
her capital : we allege no subsisting wrongs, for she amicably and honorably 
meets and settles all complaints : in tine, whatever may be said agamst her cruel- 
lies and barbarism, we cannot withhold the admission, that her national conduct 
towards us is most friendly, exemplary, full of failh. And yet, all this while, 



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•^ according to the argument, Mexico is carrying on an open war with some of our 
territories! She lias invaded us repeatedly; nay, complained seriously of our 
letting onr citizens yo itiio T'exas lo defend our soil ; while we, wiih a complai- 
sance thiit ilie world never saw equalled before, liave pleaded that we knew it 
was so, but that ihe Governuient. really tried lo hinder it; that we knew it was 
wrong, but thai our people were very unmanageable, and that, though we tried 
hard, we really coidd not slop them ! But the most singular business of at! is, 
that, for a good while, we have really kept a Charge d'Aftiires in onr own terri- 
tory, just as if it was a foreign Government! U we ever did have any right, to 
Texas, it must be confessed to be of a tenacity of life to which that of cats and 
turtles, and joiiu-snakes is nothing: a polypus that you only multiply by cutting 
it all to bits, is perish;il>le in comparison. This right is as hard to be rid of as 
that ghost of which Macbeth so reasonably complains, which, "with twenty mor- 
tal murders on its crown," would'nt slay dead, but returned lo ptish people from 
their stools. But let us, for a moment, calmly examine this supposed right, 
which, it is said, we once had lo Texas, by cession from France. 

It may be premised, that what has never been reduced to possession, nor ad- 
judged to you by li\w, is to be spoken of as a claim, not a right. A right is a 
perfected claim. There has, in this case, been just one hundred and fifiy-four 
years of counter possession. Neither we, nor France, (in whose place we stand,) 
€Ver lias had a moment's possession since 16S6. In 1810, we abandoned by 
treaty even our c/ai/y/, for an equivalent, which we now hold in Florida. In 
I83i, we reconfirmed lo Mexico, by treaty, all that we had thus yielded. In 1837, 
we solemtily declared that, so far as we were concerned, Texas wiis indepen- 
dent. In ISll, we marked out, by treaty, the lines between us, defining wliere 
our possession ended and her's began. At present, even, under this claim, our 
troops are ordered, avowedly, not to pass out of our soil, across the Sabine. And 
to Mexico herself, while so unscrupulously piundering her of what she says are 
her rights, among many pretences, we have not even the face to set up this one, 
but say that we are acquiring, or mean to acquire, a right of Texas herself, as an 
independent nation. 

If, then, the word re-annexalion is to be used for justifying what is to he 
done, it is fatal to all the steps taken for the purpose of doing it. 'If we yet 
have such a right to Texas as former treaties could not destroy, what have new 
treaties to do wiih it, or how can treaties restore what treaties could not take 
away ? If it is ours, no more is to be said about it. If ours, how can we treat 
with its possessors as an independent Power? If ours, what is President Hous- 
ton but a mockniagisirate, and his Congress but men of straw? If ours, why 
offer Mexico repeated equivalents for it? Why now offer more than we ever 
offered before? To her we are tendering what is estimated at five or six mil- 
lions, and we contract to settle at least ten, perhaps twenty, with Texas herself; 
all this being for what is already ours, by the law of the land and of nations * 
If this be not so, there is no force in the word re-annexation, and it is used 
deceptively. 

But how came we by this indisputable right? Let lis see. It came by ces- 
sion from France. ^ She passed to us, by it, in 1S03, absolutely, all that she had 
in posssession — that is, her positive rights, already made good up to the Sabine, 
or nearly ; and, in addition, she passed to us a claim against like rights still 
longer made good by Spain, of which she was equally in ilninterrupted posses- 
sion. The firfct of these powers had, between 1712 and 1717, under claim of 
discovery in 1683, occupied and settled Louisiana, of which it never after- 
wards, by possesion, extended the confines beyond the Mermento, nearly the Sa- 
bine. Nothing can be more indisputable than this. The second Power occupied 
Texas in 1690, erected it into a regular province in 1693 ; and finally main- 



tained uninterrupted possession, at all times, up to the Sabine. What more need 
be said? If perrnnnent occupation confers at last a territorial right, and that of 
France to Louisiana, as she held it to tiie Merinento, was good, that of Spain 
to Texas, up to the same actual limit, was better, because older. In a word, it 
was possession alone that made any real title for either. All the rest was much 
like the style but lately abandoned by the English nionarchs, which included, 
as a part of their dominions, France, where ihey had not had a foot of land for 
centuries ; or, like their keepinir the title of '' defenders of the faiih," bestowed 
by the Pope, long afier they had iiirned Protoslants, 

It is to be remembered that it was not only France that claimed Texas to the 
Rio Grande, but Spain that claimed Louisiana as a part of Florida. The one 
went back to discovery from 1677 to 1685, the other to discovery from 1512 ta 
1542. Now, all must grant that mere discovery must yield, as a right, to regu- 
lar, continued, uninterrupted possession. Discovery gives only the first imperfect 
claim. If not speedily followed by regular occupuiioa, that claim may be super- 
seded by another nation, which takes and keeps regular possession, the only 
thing which can perfect a territorial right. 

These are grounds which it would be perfectly idle to dispute. But if, from 
these, we choose to go bark to the only ones which can be set up as of prior va- 
lidity, then it is upon the mere fad of discovery, accompanied wi'h certain for- 
malities of taking possession, but not a real national setilement, that our claim 
through France must be set uy : and if this is to be the test, and not possession, 
we must not only fail to make good our title to Texas, but must lose that to Lou- 
isiana; for the Span ii=^h discovery of J)Oth is full one hundred and ihirty-five 
years older than the French. 

It is perfectly incontestible that Ponce de Leon discovered and took possession 
of Florida in 1512 ; that Hernando de Soto peuetraied from it to the Mississippi^ 
about the mouth of the Arkansas, xyith near five hundred men, in 1538; (hat 
Alonzo de Soto made his way from that point to the mouth of the Mississippi in 
1541 ; that his force coasted l)ack to Mexico, discovering the intermediate region 
in 1542. 

On the French part, what can be opposed to this? That in 1677 Li Salle 
came down the Mississippi to (he Arkansas; that in a second expedition, in 1683, 
he descended the Mississippi to its mouth ; and that in a third expedition, (sail- 
ing now from France, as the others came from Canada,) he landed in the bay 
of Espirilu Santo or San Bernardo, and there built and held a small fort, from 
February, 1686, to January, 16h7; but abandoned it then, and was driven off; 
since which time, the French right, if ever such at all, became but a claim found- 
ed on these facts, and maintained or urged only in the idle form of diplomatic skir- 
mishes of words, airainst the clear, definite, undisturbed possession by Spain, 
from La Salle's time up to the actual border of Louisiana, as at last settled une- 
quivociilly in practice, in fact, in the jurisdiction exercised by the nations respec- 
tively, up to the Mermento. Then, whatever the old self love of either might 
say, it) the gasconade of claim or counter-claim, the two nations, the two tongues, 
met; and this last fact alone, were every thing else silent, would be enough to 
overthrow the entire allegations of tiie French. For if, as I have shown, this 
was a question of priority, of regular occupation, of planting and colonizing, 
what proof is so strong, or what monument so lasting as that which the geogra- 
phy of both countries alTords, in the names of all the rivers and towns ? On one 
side •( the Sabine, they aie nearly all French; on the other, all are Spanish 
except a few, founded within the last twenty years. In a word, you have only 
10 glance at a gazeieer or a map of either country, and to consider in what 
tongue are the names all over its surface, in order perfectly, and beyond all argu- 



nient to learn, what was a Spanish territory, and what a French, where Loixia-- 
iana ended and where Texas began. 

I enter not, therefore, and conside* it totally useless to enter into the long clii- 
caneiy of diplomatists on either part. To what tales of travellers, to what geo*- 
graphers, to what maps, (o what former pretensions on either side they may havs- 
referred, is certainly not of the slightest consequence. What are these things 
worth against original settlement and long established possession and jurisdictioot 
Could the Spanish claim that Louisiana was included in their great iiegioii c^ 
Florida, (by their old assumption, stretching back to Texas,) shake the certainty^ 
the legal authorities of the French rights on the Mississippi, when they had once 
been suflered to establish themselves there without being dispossessed? It nnnsst 
be granted, beyond question, that the first imperfect right there was in favor t^ 
the Spanish ; but that this was afterwards entirely lost by their failure to perfect 
it b}'^ settlement. In like maimer, of course, of the Spanish claim to Texas. 
This had been perfected, and was, besides, upon historical testimony, originally 
much the older as to discovery. 

What the quibbles of negotiators may be, about matters the most airy, we leam 
Abundantly from cases of our own, either yet pending or but lately adjusted. — 
From the beginning of our national existence down to 1842, we had a boundar].- 
question of this sort wiih Great Britain, of almost indefinite extension. Yet here 
there was a definition by treaty ; while there never had been any of these rivai' 
claims of Spain and France, which, however, gradually settled themselves by 
opposite occupation. We have now pending another question with Great Bri- 
tain, almost equally old ; for we found our claim and right to Oregon partl-y ©su 
discovery in 1786 or '7. In all these cases, the adverse Plenipotentiaries R€vef 
fail to assert, as perfectly unanswerable, every pretension which their nation eves 
has or can set up. On each other, they may, or may not, make an irapressis®?. 
From 1805 to 1819, Messrs. Madison, Monroe, and Adams, made none on tfeetiF 
their Spani'sh adversaries. Nothing was won of Great Britain, as to the North- 
west boundar}% by a long series of able Ministers. From the year 1815, all oub 
Secretaries of State and Envoys have done little to advance an adjustment of our 
claim on the Pacific. Yet both nations are alike pertinacious in the persuasioa 
of their rights ; for though, as I have said, they are little like to satisfy each otbe?^ 
the negotiators must be very bad ones, indeed, if they do not perfectly cariviues 
their respective nations. I have known attorneys not to silence their adversaries- 
or persuade a judge, but I have never yet met the lawyer who did not convios®- 
his client of the perfect justness of his claims. 

What, then, need be said of it, if a popular confidence in our original claiin> to. 
Texas yet survives its long and its deliberate abandonment, in 1819, by stalesnfiemv 
thoroughly versed in the question, and entitled to the public reliance? As Ette- 
voys, or Secretaries, Monroe and'Adams maintained our title; but, after negoiisc-- 
tion, Monroe, Adams, Caliioun, and Crawford, as responsible agents of thenatbaa^ 
gave it up. Are their pleadings, as advocates, to be opposed to their own finaJ 
judgment as public men ? I maintain that, as to mere authority, the decisioj? of' 
our negotiators themselves, (men of high ability, unquestionable patriotism, and" 
much belter acquainted with the question than any of us,) is entitled to the higb>- 
est weight ; and that to oppose lo it a floating popular opinion of the day, thougfe 
ill-informed, guided by an ex parte argument only, and now sunk into a m^m 
tradition of what was at first but vague, would be utterly unworthy o( tlie gocc^. 
sense of our people, and still more unworthy of those setting up, as statesm^iBj 
and civilians, wisely to guide the people's judgment. 

The public, wise as it is when it chooses to be so, highly competent as a^' 

'/confess it, to decide, when it has once canvassed things without passios, h 

somewhat given to be impulsive in its judgments; and not a little prone %o loci- 



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on the purpose, or fanry of the day as liavins: always subsisled. Florida, now 
long siijCf obtained, has coast d, of course, lo serve an iiuporiaiit objeci. Yet 
cl)at was once the darlinir aim of our great national organ of acquisitiveness^ 
upon which ihe idea once sat rnthronfd, as ihe chief scope of all policy. 
Even before tlie sudden and fortunate acquisition of Louisiana, we had began 
to covet the land of flowi;rs iiuite as warmly and with nearly as many visionary 
notions, as we now long for the land of fruits. When we had once 2;rown 
masters ot Louisiiina, we proceeded, in ISlO, to help ourselves to a very pretty 
slice of l-'iorida, wbiih we had expressly, in 1S05, recognized to be Spain's, by 
an olFer to purchase it. unacconjpanied with the smallest assertion of any title 
on our p;iri. Jn ISIS, by a still bolder stroke of that sort of diplomacy, which 
clutches what it wants, when it can take it, we may be said to have struck at 
all ihr; rest of the Peninsida. It was, in a word, from 1803 to 1819, the lead- 
ing object of oiu- lerriiorial cupidity. To bar out, by its possession, all foreign 
access wiifiin our shores: to close the door ajiainst foreijru emissaries alledged 
to siir up to war ilie lormidable Indian tribes that lay in easy communication 
with ii ; 10 round out our realm, and abolish its interriipiion at so dangerous a 
point ; to exclude smuggling, that transmitted and customary pretence set up| 
for every acquisition or encroachment, and now renewed even by the very 
party who ran least be accused of any violent zeal for the preservation of our 
revenue laws — these, and the grasping a strong maritime position, the fortress 
to us of the entiie West India trade, atid the sea-pass of all our great and rich 
yottng empiie, about to sprinji up on the Mississippi, were, in that day, both to 
our staiesiuen and to the popular mind, the imperative motives for making it 
ours, at almost any cost. To Texas, on the other hand, no eye of desire had 
yet been turned. iNone of the transcendent advantages which it now offers, 
none of the frightful dangers which now glare upon us from every part of its 
soil, had then visioncd themselves to ihe prophetic glance of the Secretary of 
State, even during a four years continuous negotiation, (our second on the sub- 
ject.) and even though, dtiring three fotuths of that contest, he had been a 
member of the cabinet which eonducted it. Now, whaiever may be said of any 
other inducements of an airy sort, such as the imagitiation of a poetic and fanciful 
politician can always easily call up, nay, and turn, with the assistance of anony- 
nioiis letteis, (of which the present occasion has furnished an abundant crop,) 
idle speculations into certainties the most positive atid alarming — it is easy to 
see, that all the physical and all the permanent political benefits that would 
accrue to us from reducing Texas to possession, were the same as now, and 
just as visible lo the discerning eyes of great and skillful public men. The 
question of right they sinely much more thoroughly undeistood, than we un- 
derstand it now ; for 1 need scarcely say, that it has long ago passed out of the 
public mind. Mr. jMonroe, the successful negotiator of the purchase of Loui- 
siana, subseqtiently our special minister at Madrid in this very matter — the 
Secretary ol State, who, in 1815, re opened the conferences with Don Onis, con- 
ducted them above a year, and when he rose to the Presidency, must be sup- 
posed to have guided with particular care a great question like this, with which 
he was every way so identified — must surely have understood our rights, and 
was little likely to betray them. Had he been false, however, two other South- 
ern politicians of the first magnitude were there to watch him, and one of these, 
at least, was surely a man not to be hoodwinked as to what was passing imme- 
diately beneath his nose, when his vast perspicacity stretches across the ocean 
itself, and pierces the secrets of cabinets 3,000 miles away. 

By a singular fatality, amongst the leading politicians in Mr. Monroe's cabi- 
net, it was a Northern member, (as sums now admitted,) who came last into the 
surrender of our claim on Texas. By a second fatality, not less singular, and 



adding to its singularity a shocking injustice, it is upon this very opponent of 
the surrender that, with a strange transfer of parls and a strange anachionism 
of feelings not yet awakened in him towards the South by its treatment of him, 
the blame of (hat measure has been thrown, with the addition of the most igno- 
minious, and most manifestly unfounded charges besides; and it has been 
attempted so to be thrown, for the benefit of this project, and of a leader, who 
himself, it Southern interests had any foul play in this matter, must be held to 
have been much less their guardian — much more their betrayer, than Mr. 
Adams. 

It will have been seen, that I consider it perfectly clear (hat there was no be- 
trayal in the case, and that in the past, there was any thing but guilt in what 
was done. It is plain that, besides^ doing all he could to secure the great and 
real object of the cabinet, (the acquisition of Florida,) (he Secretary of State 
fought to the last, as became the most pertinacious man of his day, to obtain 
what the other members of the Administration had consented to yield all claim 
upon, namely, Texas. Let me here say more explicitly, that the survey of all 
these negotiations — that of Paris for Louisiana in 18l)3 — that of Madrid for 
Florida and Texas in 1805 — and that of Washington for the same objects in 
1815, and 1819, has left on my mind only the thoroiTgh persuasion, that they who 
conducted the business on our part, knew, could not help knowinsr, how utterly- 
untenable was our claim beyond Louisiaiia, as we had received and now held 
it from the French ; and that they employed it thus perseveringlv, with but 
the expectation of accomplishing the real aim, the acquisition of Florida, at a 
cheaper rate, by thus harrassing about another territory, a power long in a pre- 
carious state at home, already widely threatened as to her possessions on this 
continent, and to whom we ourselves had just given a humiliating lesson of the 
little safety with which she could hold lands bordering upon our own. I know 
that it maybe said, and especially by the advocates now of proceedino-s the 
most utterly faithless, that I am here attributing to our negotiations a very dis- 
graceful, that is, a very immoral conduct. I have only to say, that such thmo^s 
lie entirely within the permitted practices of diplomacy ; which is everywhere 
except as to deliberate fraud upon our adversary, or breach of faith when 
pledged, but little more than a game of skilful pretences. Every thino- here 
warrants the belief that these were the resort in this instance. They have met 
a fate which often attends all insincerity, individual or national. The efforts 
made to impress upon Spain our earnestness and the solidity of our claim, had, 
in the manner I have already pointed out, the hap to convince our own people 
and thus to leave, even down to the present day, a strong persuasion that Texas, 
of which France had never been in possession, against which she had always 
allowed her claim to slumber, and which she had, when applied to in 1805 di- 
rectly refused to say was included in her cession to us, had been yielded up by 
the treaty of 1819. 

Let me appeal to one final and decisive fact, brought to view, on the Spanish 
part, in the contest. Don Onis establishes that, in the year 1803, our Govern- 
ment, then pressing Spain for the purchase of Florida, made to that country, 
through our Minister at Madrid, the offer of a regular guaranty of all her pos- 
.sessions west of the Mississippi, if she would agree to sell us what lay on this 
.side. This important instrument may be found in vol. 4, page 512, of Ameri- 
can State papers, by Lowrie and Franklin. Mr. Charles Pinckney, in his note 
of the 7th February, 1803, to Don Pedro Cevalles, says : 

" To obtain this, thejr have authorized me to say, that, should His Majesty be now in- 
dined to sell to the United States his possessions east of the Mississippi, or between that 
and the river Mobile, agreeably to the proposiiioas enclosed, the United States will make 



8 

His Majesty, and I do now make, in their name, the imporlaat offer of guarantying to 
hkea and his successors, his dominions beyond the Mississippi." 

Propositions enclosed. 

""1st. The United States will purchase the possessions of His Catholic Majesty on the 
•oast side of" the river Mississippi, lor which they will pay dollars. 

**2d. 'I hey will purchase these possessions, for which they will pay dollars: and, 

i»opeover, guaranty to His Majesty, and his successors, his possessions beyond the Mississippi. 

""3d. 'I hey will purchase the country between the rivers Mississippi and Mobile, belougj- 
iag to His Catholic Majesty, and also places of deposite near the mouths of the other navi- 
jfpibl* rivers passing from their territory through either of the Floridas, for which they will 

^y dollars, or enter into other obligations which may be thought equivalent to the ac- 

-Siaisition. 

■"4lh. If neither of these propositions can be acceeded to, they will then purchase certain 
«ra«ts of country on the banks of the Mississippi, and the other rivers passing from their ter- 

fitory into ihat'of His Catholic Majesty, for which they will pay dollars, or enter into 

<*h€r obligations, which mwy be thought equivalent to the acquisition." 

I need liartlly point (o the weightiness, in the present question, of this " impor- 
'teiit offer." It was made, be it remarked, afle?' liie French had acquired Louis- 
wna, but before yet our desioii to piiichase of Prance had been started. Our 
GJuvernnieni had been awaie of this cession since Marcli, 1801, but never knew 
»l»e precise (eims, nor extent of the transfer, until a few months before the pre- 
ive«)iHiion of this important oft'er. James Madison, in his letter of the 26th July, 
1802, to Charles Pinckney, Minister to Spain, says : 

■*• The last information from Paris renders it certain that the cession of Louisiana to France 
i>a£ actually been concluded, and that the cession comprehends the two Floridas. In this 
■Stale of the business, it seems unnecessary to decide on the price which Spain might be led 
io-eipect for a cession of the Floridas, including New Orleans, to the United States, and the 
«Bcr« so, as it would be of use for us previously to know the value she places on the guaranty 
»3lpospd in ray letter to you of 25ih of September last. For the present, the cession wished 
^ A« United States must be an object of negotiation with the French Government, It will, 
eotwiihsianding, continue to be proper for you to cultivate the good dispositions of Spain, in 
»eUition to it, both as they may not be entirely disregarded by France, and as, in the turn of 
rvients, Spain may possibly be extricated from her engagements with France, and again have 
4ixe disposal of the territories in question." 

Now, here is a solemn and a voluntary pledge to Spain, by the JelTerson ad- 
•Bninistralion, and through James Madison, in behalf of all the Spanish "domi- 
ciions" and "possessions" beyond the Mississippi. It is made a/j?er the estab- 
lisbment of those French rights to which we piesentiy succeeded, and clearly, 
j^fecrefore, as an engagement to unite with Spain in withstanding any attempt of 
•France in contravention of the subsisting possession of Texas, or other regions 
%e3'otid the Mississippi, by Spain. It is, in a word, a direct, and, at (hat time, 
i«n impartial recognition of the rights of Spain to tiiose territories, and a protTered 
■oovenant, on our part, not only that //;e will not disturb her there, but that we 
I Will suller no other nation to do it. I need hardly add, that, whether or not it 
was accepted by the power to which it was made, is of no consequence, except 
4o the active duties wliich by it we might have assumed. Passively, it pronounc- 
ed the Spanish title unquestionable. It settled, or should have settled, forever, 
as to us, the qtiestion of right, unless, indeed, there should now be found, under 
f\\& new system of national ethics, as adapted to the annexation project, learned 
<Soclors who are ready to argue that the ofier thus soberly made implied no per- 
suasion of what we undertook to affirm ; that our Government, the Jefferson ad- 
ministration, in no manner believed what it was willing to say, but only engaged 
♦o believe it, if Spain would do an entirely independent thing to oblige us ! 

I liave thought necessary, Mr. President, to enter thus distinctly into the re- 
futation of these lingering notions of our former rights, though now abandoned 
•0ut only by the irrevocable acts of honorable treaties, but our quiet possession 



of Florida, then the great, object of Southern wishes, as Texas is now : Piori^. 
yielded to us, as then declared, in part as an equivalent for tiie rennnciatioife o§ 
all future clciims in (he other quarter. To mo-?tj|men's rainds, there is no araii- 
ment so strong, in favor of a meditated act of injustice, as the convincing £be 
people that they themselves have been originally wronged out of the object tl'&ey 
seek. Upon this natural infirmity, this bad casuistry of the passions, the advo^ 
cates of this wicked, this faithless Treaty under discussion — the advocates oi 
which call it ''re-annexation" — have endeavored to operate. Tliey have 
availed themselves of the old and groundless public notion spread by the causes 
I have explained. In aid of these, they have appealed to a personal animosity 
existing, in many quarters, against a single negotiator of the treaty of ISlQ-j^ 
though but a subordinate instrument in the matter — though evidently guided 
all the while by not only a superior power, but by an older and more familiar 
agent in the question — though joined all the while with a strono' Southern Ca» 
binet — though then unaffected with any resentment towards tbe South — tluHtgli 
now well understood to have yielded reluctantly what a Southern President, s 
Southern Attorney General, and two Southern Secretaries had conceded. NoS 
content with all this, they have trumped up, to finish by imposture the, work of, 
awakened prejudice and detraction, a charge as infamous as it is unsupportetlj. 
of the suppression by the Secretary of State of capital parts of the negotiaiiony 
and his treasonous arrangement to avoid obtaining all that we had ever pretend- ^ 
ed to claim. I need scarcely say to any one who has felt it his duiy, as I havs 
done, to scrutinize these accusations, that the printed history of the neiroiiatiou,. 
to which I have more than once referred, affords a chain of testimony that an- 
nihilates every trace of these charges, even every possibility of ilieir truth ; and 
that not only do the new documents produced utterly fail to substantiate v/hat 
Mr. Ewing is said lo have informed General Jackson of, but even, when a little, 
sifted, themselves afford decisive proof against nearly all that they claimed to> 
establish. Of these last things, I need speak no moie than thus to characterize- 
them, especially when I have so clearly shown the legitimate grounds opoa 
which the treaty was concluded, and the true stale of our original rights undei 
the cession of Louisiana from France. It is clear that we obtained at least as 
much as we had any tolerable pretence to, and, in addition, at the inadequate 
price of five millions, to be paid to our own citizens, our favorite object of that 
day, the possession of Florida, And it wa§ the more necessary that I should 
endeavor to correct the erroneous opinion prevailing without on the.se matters, 
because, even in this body, and among Senators averse to this wild Treaty, we 
have heard the same opinions in regard to our original title to Texas as a parfe 
of Louisiana. 

I pass from this examination of (he proper and organic power of our Govern- 
meni over this matter by treaty, as one involving every domestic and const it uiiar*- 
al question, and from the consideration of the main subterfuge by which is (o be 
avoided any impediment arising out of (he national compact itself, to other ob^ 
jections as fatal to the form as those already glanced at are lo the substance of thb^ 
act. The instrument before us is styled a Treaty ; yet I cannot but look on it .as des- 
titute of all the essential characteristics of a great act of that sort, between natioofii 
and nation. Is that Irish act of union, which annihilated Erin's indeprndenfe 
legislation and her entire nationality, a treaty? Or was it onFy an "act of irj- 
corporation, of political extinction? Was it a treaty when Russia, l»y ukase-^ 
bade Poland cease to be? I freely admit, (he writers upon national law re- 
cognise as (reaties exceedingly unequal engagenieuls between Siiites, and eves 
such as reduce one of them to the veige of iion-exisience. There are, al.-*o, lert?- 
porary conventions, miscalled treaties, which may bo made with (/eftfc/oGoMeMO:- 
menis, for the mere purpose of peaceful intercourse, to which a neutr.d nulias: 



10 

may resort, under certain circnmstanocs; but as these involve no absolute exer- 
cise of perfected sovereignly, ihey must take an inferior rank and name. A treaty, 
in a word, supposes at least two parlies ; and parties to such a thinf>' they are not, 
unless both are sovereign. Here there is but one such party. The other has 
yet to make good, against a power on which it but lately depended, still claiming 
it as dependent, and with which we are bound not to interfere, its separate su- 
premacy, the eminent domain over its soil and people. Between them we can- 
not interfere without a faithless violation of treaty engagements. For this I have 
high authority — no less than that of the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Mc- 
DuFFiE.) In his message of 1S36 to the South Carolina Legislature, he says: 

" If we admit Texas into our Union \vhileI\Iexico is still waging war against that province, 
with a view to restabiish her supremacy over it, we shall, by the very act itself, make our- 
selves a party to the war. Nor can we lake this step without incurring this heavy responsi- 
bility, until Mexico herself shall recogniso the independence of her revolted province." 

Were both the parlies, however, really sovereign, so as to be capable of the 
highest acts of nationality, (such as give no rights against them, to others,) there 
are acts which, as between them, would not be treaties, because they put tin end 
to the s-^nerate existance of the one or the other. For a treaty must leave, as 
well 'ai;»-fiTin, two parties, in order that the obligation iiself may continue. Under 
the ideas of monarchical systems, which suppose that a people may be held in 
fee sitnplc. the sovereign may, by renunciation, or alienation, extitrguish the 
sovereignty ; not so, however, under Republican ];)rinciples. By these, a State, 
once free, cannot divest itself of its freedom, cannot extinguish its individuality 
as a people, and the act would be void, precisely for the same reason for which 
we hold that a freeman cannot, by contract, part with his liberty. Were Texas, 
therefore, a State, sovereign and free, she could not by treaty reduce herself into 
our dependancy and territory, though I admit that she might unite with us by 
another process. 

I have already shown, at the outset, in examining the powers of this Govern- 
ment over a mauer like this, that it has no power and could have no facitlty to 
incorporate witb ours, of its own action, another people, or an external territory. 
It is equally clear that, could the sovereignty of Texas be extinguished, this 
could only be done by the im:iirdiate act of her people itself, not of her public 
fiinciionaries constituted for another purpose. Nor would some former assent 
of fier collective .citizens, some vote of six or eight years since, such as is now 
put in to stand for her will-, be CJlid for the purpose, still less can it be valid, 
when the assent then obtained, "was to a thing totally different. The vote then 
taken was for her union to ihi^ confederacy as an equal member, not a depend- 
ant territory ; for, as all know, this last evasion of the (^Constitution, this indi- 
rection, h;id not then been thought of as within the reach of tlic treaty making 
power. That i)less('(l and briiiht invention of the strict constructionists had not 
yet sprtmg, Pallus like, from the brain of any Southern Jove. 

A treaty then supposes not only two paities, but parties competent to what is 
to bo accomplished by it. If the object is a cession of any kind, the one party 
must be qualified to grant, and the other (o receive that object ; but since botli 
these conditions are wanting here, this is no treaty. Had we omselves been 
competent to siieh a transaction, beyond doubt a jiariy, namely, Mexico, might 
liave been foimd, with whom we could enter into it. To search so far was 
manifestly unnecessary, however ; since when no right can be taken, it is of 
exceodiiigly liitjo con?(quence wlicllier any call be <;ivcn or not. But since 
ocpMliiy HI irea i-s is gr.aily to he desiied, it was clearly best, that a paity inca- 
P'lhle of re.ieiving should have to deal with one equallv incapable of giving. 
Knowiiii; the consummate /;/-Mr//'//'-r' ,is well as msfh//i of the AiJministration, I 
make no doubt that it gave, in its long and profound dclibeialions over this 



11 

matter, great weight to this last consideration. Not equality only is to be flesired 
in treaiies, but simplicity ; and certainly the course taken trroatly siinpHlied this 
business. For beiween our own incompetency to the ihinif nnd that of our 
well chosen counter party, there is a wonderful conformiiy. If Texas be sove- 
reign, (he doctrine of some politicians is, that this Government is not — has but 
a ^Mr/<fi sovereignty. Here, then are very pretty facilities to this State Kiiihts 
operation of chnching a State's sovereign rights to thai wliich lias none. What 
becomes of the vanished supremacy? Does it flit to the moon, wiiere the last 
wits of heroes, the over- volatile virine of dames, and whatever else is missing 
from earth, (poets say) is treasured up? Or does it lie dormant, like a heiir in 
his winter sleep, sucking his paws? Or is it bottled up for another generation, 
like South-side London Particidar Madeira, to grow only the finer the longer it 
is kept under cork? But according to the same creed of State sovereignty, 
what are we buying, under this so called treaty? Are we purchasing of an 
independent State, what onr Declaration of Independancc declaies lo be inde- 
feasil)ly in every people, the rights of their self-irovernmeni ? We surely are 
not deriving a bargain for the public do;nain of Te.Kis, well understood to be 
entirely alienated, perhaps twice over. Here I will take occasion to state an im- 
portant fact, without stopping to characterize it r.s evincing a pm-pose to produce 
a false impression. I am utterly opposed, however, to the people of the United 
States being deceived by it. The tact lo which I allude is this ; (he negotiaiors 
of the Texas treaty on the part of Texas, Mess;rs. Van Zandt and Henderson, 
in their note to John C. Calhoun, Secretary of State, of the 15ih of April, 1814, 
in reply to certain inquiries of Mr. Calhoun, say : 

" Upon the subject of the public hinds, the undersigned submit a summary statement, 
made from a lale report of the Comniissioner of the General Land OflQce, to ihe President of 
Texas. 

' acres. 

He estimates the aggregate at - - . - - 203,")20,000 

Lands appropriated ...... 07.408,673 

Remainder unappropriated ..... 1:^6 111, :i27." 

To this ^Hate report" no date is given, although it was comtinnticaicd to (he 
Senate with the treaty, as evidence of the quantity of land we were to get, out 
of which to pay the debts of Texas aS'<umed by us. Now, sir, what will you 
think of this statement, when informed of the fact, that this '•'■late report'''' was 
made in 1841, since which time we have no accoinit of lands sold or granted 
by Texas? The date of the report appears by the memoir accompanying the 
map of Texas, sent here by the President of the United States. 

What, then, are we to get for the assumpiion in blank of all the public debts 
of Texas? For, as to the attempted specificauon in the tieaty, delu<ively put 
there as if they whodrew it tr.eant to limit or could limit our I abiliiies, nothing 
can be inore falacious. With or without (hai specification, it is precisely the 
same thing : we aie none the less liable for her previous con'racts, acknow- 
ledged o'- repudiated. She becomes owe femme cnverie and trioui2h we may 
make with her before (he bridal, or even at the alter, an uaderstandiUg that we 
are to discharge only a certain part of her debts, (pay her milliner only, for in- 
stance, and let her grocer, or her butcher oo whistle for his money,) these 
honest tradesnrien may be upon us with a capias next .morning, helort; yet its 
blush has met the basiiful bride's, or we have given her timid charms^ tbe first 
salutation of the day. What then, can we be pretended to bebuyin^i-, or other- 
wise gettincr, but her sovereignty ? And now, according to tbe very princi[)!e 
in chief of those who are urging' 'is to the acquisition, what is this worth, as a 
vendible cnnmiodity ? Many of these veiy peopN^ say, that we can take no 
ign right over her, except just so long as she pleases. A part of them 



12 

itold a Donite self-emancipation to be always legitimate ; another part hold that 
secession is never to be denied ; and another portion c\a\m peaceful nidlijication 
as '' the rightful remedy," to which a State may always resort when she lists. 
What should hinder Texas, as soon as we have paid her debts, from ^'^culcula- 
titig the value of the Ujiion ?" If now so accessable lo the offers of England, 
as the friem?s of this treaty pretend, may she not be quite as much so (hen, 
when suffering (as the Hon. Senator from South Carolina assures us that every 
body in the South suffers) under "a worse than colonial vassalage," "the in- 
tolerable oppression of the tariff.'"' Meihinks there are some folks wonderftdly 
fond of "enormous burdens," and some who are strangely disposed to entice 
'others inio wretchedness, no doubt upon the old principle, " that misery loves 
'Company." But can we be at all sure that this singular Southern application 
of that renowned democratic rule, called the " greatest happiness principle," 
will contimie ? After having drawn the Texaus into a share in the inestimable 
advantages of being one of us, are ihey not very likely, as soon as they shall be 
oi the household, to lell them some rather awful lamily secrets, as for instance, 
under what " a grinding tyranny" we live, and how much better off they, the 
poor folks of (he lone star would be under the English dominion, dependant 
<m their '• natural market." 

ft must be confessed that some Southern gentleman are a good deal given, in 
4ihe snug little circle here, and in that of the other House, or in fireside parties 
of a few thousands al home, to talking just in this way. We ourselves are 
quite used to all this sort of thing. We know (he patriotism and loyalty of their 
true seniimenis, and th;it all this is but a joke. But when the Texas folks, 
already with so many alarming affinities to England, come here, will not they who 
fetiow no belter, lake all this for earnest, and think this a very bad business that 
they have got into, and this coveted blessing of annexation rather a'sorry 6oo« ? 
Itetrikes me so, Mr. President, and that the probabilities of their long retaining 
any very violent attachment to this Union, beyond the lapse of the mere politi- 
cal honeymoon, are by no means strong, especially under the indoctrination of 
the teachers to whom 1 have just referred. It cannot be said that it was a love 
of freedom that drove them from home; for that they had already, so that, as 
•<o it, they could gain nothing, and might loose every thing. A part of them 
notoriously k;ft us to become the denizens of a foieign land, sirange to their 
■tongue, alien to their religion, and that of their fathers, utterly tuicerlain in all 
its public destinies, and offering nothing to bitid to it the affections of one bred 
in our insiitutions, except the hope ot overturning the very government to 
-which they pledged ihemselves, wheu they sought its protection, and received 
•its bounty. The only serious allegation of the Texaus was, th.1t Mexico had 
•exchatiged her Federative organizaiion for a centralized one, which was disa- 
jTfceable to Texas, or rather feigned to be so; for I think it clear that, had the 
iact been reversed, Texas would have picked the same quarrel, alledging other 
and opposite reasons. Noi freedom, then was their aim, not theoretical rights ; 
aaot liberty of conscience,"for which they had never siipulatcd, and in which 
iJiey liad all they could expect, toleration for the very small degree of religion 
about which they had ever troubled themselves. The real object, as all know 
who watched the purposes of this movement, was a totally different one. 
Mexico had given thetn libeially large gifts of fertile lands^ highly fit for the 
richest productions of slave labor ; but as the laws of Mexico "did not permit 
• slavery, those lands were comparitively valueless. The insurrcciion, then, 
punin«r out of view the personal ambiiion of (hose who were in hope its lead- 
ers h ul b'U two real aim>, and both these land jobbing oue>, to throw off the 
Mexican laws, in order that slave property miirht be iuiroduced ; and with a 
vide in.irket for sugar and cotton lands tht)s obtained, to seize upon a gieat 



13 

public domain, and parcel it out among the small American population, so as 
to enrich every man of them, and give their leaders even princely possessions. 
It is futile to talk of Texan liberty as having any cause, any impulse but this, 
whaiever show of patriotism, and devotion to the cause of self-government may 
have been made. It is equally futile to pretend that, whatever dishonest en- 
couragement to the design, the troubles, or the weakness or wickedness of 
Mexico afFoided, the attempt itself could ever have been thought of by a body 
of population not now 200,000, and then far less, against an empire of fully 
eight millions, unless under a thorough persuasion, justitied by every part of 
the event, that our people, breaking loose as individuals from every just obliga- 
tion as a nation, would pour down to the war, afford arms, supplies, every thing, 
and in reality, as it has proved, do most of the paying, and all the fighting. 
Such was the fact. In the first glare of that enthusiasm which among us awakes 
so easily to any cause that will talc-e the style of '■''freedom^'' " Constitution," 
^' self government," our hardy, brave, confiding, and generous men of the West 
made a wide rush to the war, under the cry, believed by them, of liberty. 
Among this number, Mr, President, I had myself many friends, and relatives, 
whose devotion to freedom, noble nature, and during spirit induced them in a 
cause supposed honorable, to hazard every thing; and but too many of them 
fertilized the battle-fields of Texas with their life blood. By such, Mexico was 
beaten, and borne back, Texas seemed won, and its independence, for the time, 
achieved. 

So plain and manifest had been, in that contest, our dereliction of national 
duty as a neutral, that after the seeming completion of its success, our Govern- 
ment, though invited by Texas, did not venture to profit by it, dreading too 
much the imputed infamy over the civilized world, of so foul a transaction. 
Such was the ground taken by the Seu'itor from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Bu- 
CHAN^'AN,) wheii he voted against recognizing even the independence of Texas 
in 1 837. So the new Republic of the" moment was left to confirm, if it could, 
by those things which, even much more than valour in the field make or mar 
a nation, all that arms appeared to have won. 

From almost that moment, the cause and the hopes of Texas have gone 
backwards. Her councils have failed to shape out for her anything secure; 
nothing respectable abroad, nothing worthy at home, has attended her etfoi^ts to 
prepare for the contest never relinquished on the part of Mexice, and certain to 
be pushed again as soon as that power was disembarrassed of still closer conflicts 
with France', and afterwards with Yucat;m. Gradually, a complete inefficiency 
of every thing belonging to a government, a destiiuiion of all resources, a ruio 
of all the public character which might have supplied their place, a general loss 
of all confidence or sympathy, and finally the visible signs of a total incapacity 
to be a nation, of an established imbicility and anarchy, have gathered over her 
fortunes. This is in effect avowed by the very authors and defenders of the 
treaty. In the midst of her enemies general inactivity, she has ccntrived to 
exhaust all her means of defence; and, therefore, it is said needs our protection. 
She has no army ; her navy has been sold at auction. She is without revenue 
for even her ordinary expenditures, and her credit is utterly gone. In this state 
of collapse urged as'one of the grounds for this treaty, with every syuipiom of 
political dissolution upon her, the ratiles in her throat, and the last ligidiiy set- 
tlinir over her members, after she has been plied with divers stiinulanis of invi- 
tation, of threats and wheedling, fomented with certain warm flannels in the 
shape of perhaps more than one sort of treaty, the cordial of an army poured 
down her throat, and the smelling bottle of a fleet clapped to her nose, a Presi- 
dential rmrse, and a diplomatic doctor come to us, and lell us, that she is at 
death's door— that she has not even had a finger ache— that, however, she is very 



14 

poorly — that, an^ain, she is in singulaily fine health and spirits — but ihaf she is 
very bad, and ihe undertaker Hiny be sent for — thai it is noihing bui the me- 
gTitns, produced by certain confabidiiiions with one Mr. Andrewo, who has put 
lier in greai bodily fear, l)y otfering to buy all her netrroes, if some body will 
lend him ihe money, and of whom hei apprehen<!i(ins have become, very natu- 
rally, ahnost uncontrolable upon his being compelled, for fear of li/i/c/n/ig, to mn 
away I All this, certified by any quaniiiy of anonymons leuers, they still tell 
us, insisting that Texas is perfectly independent, but on the injinediaie verge of 
falling a prey to the first comer; that she is entirely at peace with every body, 
and especially with Mexico, but yet is in the mo^t imminent peiil of being over- 
WJielmed, no body can say precisely how, or Ijy whom ; that there has been no 
War between her and Mexico for full eight years, ihoii<j[h, to be sine, we did last 
year mediate for an arn)isiice between them, and tliiuiirh the President's last 
annual message, drawn up since this treaty was set on foot, declaieil that there 
was war between then), and thai war carried on with a shocking inhumanity. 
Such are the apologies and pretences for this precipitate treaty, made without 
authority, and without consulting the American people. Let me return, how- 
ever, from my history to my ar«iunenf. and show a liic further, that, for still 
other reasons, this thing before us is in no sort a treaty. A treaty supposes, if 
no! faith towards the party with whom yon are dealing, at least fiith towards 
yourselves. Here there is none on either side. The treaty will in no sort effect 
what it expicsses. It in no maimer expresses what it will eifect ; and this was 
perfectly well understood between those who diew it; so that it is a fraud upon 
us, by Texas, to which this Administration are parlies. 

A treaty is surely not such which conveys not its expressed object, but one 
directly opposite. Here we stipulate for a .sovereignty, and a territory : we get 
only a war. We bargain for possession, and we ha\e to fight for u, and that 
liniler di.-honor for the violation of treaties. If it be a purchase, it is of that 
which cannot be deliveied, on one side, and cannol be taken on ihe other by 
treaty. If it is a conveyance, it is, as to the sovereignly of what cannot be 
alineated, and, as to the lerritoiy, partly of what is in disputed possession, and 
partly of w hat never was in possession of Texas, but adversely held and occu- 
pied by l^exico. For the professed objects, w Inch we are thus not to get, we 
arc to give in money, a consideration much larijer than appears, and all our na- 
tional holler besides. To ligheii it, pretended assets, long ago di^sipaied. are 
set for h ; but, as 1 have .said, nothing is delivered lo us but a (juarrel upon dis- 
lionorable terms. We get no title but lo a war. If this was what we wanted, 
why the foimaliiy of a iieaiy. and the expense of a purchase? Surely we coultT 
have gol a fiohl somewhere for noihinir. Why then pay down in advance some 
fifteen or twenty millions for one? Why not settle the Oiegon question in that 
way, where we have a right disputed, and an adversary woiihy our piowcss? 

Again, a treaty is something made by a iiealy making power; but the acts, 
which, as lieaiies, it has no right to do, aie, when done, no treaties at all. The 
President and Senate have no right lo make war; ihey cannol. therefore, right- 
fully enter iruo a treaty, ihe direct efl^ecl of which is war, and gives (o another 
nation a right of war against us, or assumes a war pending. They surely cannot 
do thai, which is an aggiessicm upon another nation, as well as an usurpation 
upon our own Coiistiiution. It is m.inifest thai, p(Muling a war between Texas 
and Mexico, a so called treaty, by which the former alienated to us all her pos- 
sessions, and her sovereignty, (the eniiie subject of tin? war,) would of course be 
nothing but a direct asssmnpiion of the war,a sii!>stituiioii of omselves for Texa". 
l^iie, we may have siipiilaied for possession only ; but while that possession is a 
iTiaiterof war. and can only arise out of the fijrlunaie issue of thai war — war, 
tliough not stipulated, is the direct and principal efTcci, and possession only con- 



15 

tmgent and subsidiary. Texas cannot deliver us possession, but only the war 
upon (he event of which that possession depends; so (hat (he misnamed treaty 
of annexa(ion or incorporation is not such, but war under another name, faith- 
lessly and unconstitutionally made, [t is manifest that such would be the object 
on the p:irt of Texas, and such alone the expectation on our part. 

If Texas be not already in (he condidon I have described; if she be not oa 
the very eve of political extinction ; if possessed of an independance in any sort 
real enough, (and high and clear it should be, that our honor may be free of all 
suspicion,) to jusiify this step on our part, why should she thus yield up her 
seperate, her individual being, as a people, and become not a State, but a depend- 
ant territory ? Nations never do this voluntarily. They recoil as instinctively 
from such forfeiture of their own identity, as the soul of each man in them 
shrinks from the thought of annihilation, preferring, almost, deliberately to en- 
counter any chances of eternal pain, rather than to perish, to be swallowed up 
and lost in nothingness. Nothing is stronger than (his principle or feeling, im- 
planted by nattiie herself in ilie hearts of every people as soon as formed. In a 
nation, it is the very life, the vital fire that must have warmeJ it up into thought 
atid motion, and made it a political existence. If Texas riever had this, she nevec 
has been a nation free and independent. She has been but a poor automaton, 
dressed up, perhaps imposingly enough, in the semblance of one, and like that 
haughty Turk, whom most of us have seen playing an exceedingly good game 
of chess, apparently hard to beat, but really an empty image all the while, moved 
by unseen springs, guided by sorne operator not far off, who looks on with a most 
disinterested aspect, and has not the slightest apparent connexion with the game. 
If Texas was free, independent, the mistress of not only her own soil, but of 
Mexican regions in addition, which no man of hers had ever trod except ia 
anklets of iron ; if she laughs at Spanish arms, and has no greater danger to fear, 
in any other quarter, than Mr. Andrews, and his shadowy bands; if especially, 
she be so strong that it was necessary for us (o turn suppliants and intriguers for 
a connexion with her ; if, I say, she be all this, why seek to lay down her national 
existence, like a heavy burden to be borne no longer ? Why foifeit her untiara- 
mclled liberty, her proud self-reliance, her guardianship of her own interests, 
surely now quite hostile to our own, according to the veiy gentlemen who here 
urge (his union? Wi(h what, at worst, is she threatened? On the one side, I 
see noihing more awful than Mr. Andrews, and on the other nothing more for- 
miduble than a free trade (realy with England. Are these the things that unman 
the Southern chivalry, and make the heroes of San Jacinto quake? Why, as ta 
abolition, any-;ilarm which Texas feels. luust surely be at the prospective failure 
of profits,, rather than the danger of the loss of any thing she now has; for it 
seems that there are, in all, but 25,000 slaves in Texas, or about one eighth of 
the entire population she claims. Now, where but one man in seven owns a 
tlave, the popular dread of abolition, extending only to one seventh of the whites, 
cannot be very engrossing. Besides, I can see no evidences of any such terror. 
In spite of all the contagious alarms, bred in our Slate Depaitment, her people 
are calm, her statesmen self possessed. Her veiy diplomatists have failed (o take 
the hint, to comprehentl the nods and winks of our cabinet, to copy its simulated 
trepidation, to echo the dolorous language of its apprehensions. In short, thev 
never advert to it at all ; and even om- complaisant minisier, Mr. Muiphy, though 
of a soul in which all sorts of tornados of the feelings are easily produced, has, 
on this matter, so far bridl-d •' the whiilwind of hi'- emotions," as not (o attribute 
to Texas the slightest sliaie in iliis drci'.d. Y»'i ii is there that these diie plans 
are hatching, and over her that the-e dangcis impend ; danglers which she either 
does net see, or does nut fear; visible and frightful otily lo those who are two. 
thousand miles off! 



16 

The fmih is, this whole business is a fraud, ;i plan, with which John Tyler 
intends, if he can, to bainboDzle ihe American people in the appioaching Presi- 
deniiul eleciion. Sir, names lower than befii things often preseiiied in this body, 
contempnious terms rr.rely ever applicable lo matters of such sfrave consequence, 
can alone convey in their Iruih these miserable pretences. They are h.irilly de- 
scribahle but as trumpery and humbug. The dialect, not of aflfairs of Suite, but 
of the gaming table or nice course, can alone body them forih in their turpitude, 
iheir nefariousncfs. The conspirators who conceived them coidd t)oi well have 
talked of them, but as ihc adepts in Hoyle and the si ud book speak of the plans 
by which pocket books are to be em|)ticd, or purses taken. The meiaphors and 
the vocabulary of si\ch people could alone illustrate or elucidate ihe purposes lo 
be accomplished, or the means to be employed. Without eveo the assistance of 
what we hear, we know how tl.'e chief player of this despicable game must have 
told his confederiites of his expectations. Their conuuon organ, the sporting 
calender hereof this fraierniiy, has talked of the thing all the while much iu thai 
jockey phrase which was appropriate to it. From it we could collect the cutting, 
the sluiffling, the slocking of the pack thai was going on. Through it, we have 
Jearnt how the President held back this card of annexation as an ace of irntnps, 
that was, in the nick of the play, lo give him the game, and sweep the board. 
At limes, however, (as the figures of speech of the Goveriuneni piper are ofieii 
Hot a little mixed, aiul glide inio the lofiier style of the camp and the lielil of 
glory,) this trump raid brcame a bomb that was suddenly lo fall from the skies 
among the forces of one adversary, or a mine that was to blow the assailing legions 
of another into the sky. Now, it was lo come down upon iMr. Van Biuen's 
head, and now, lo burst beneath Mr. Clay's feet, knocking one into the earth, 
and the other into ihc air. Prescmly, again, relapsing into more pacific jihrase, 
Ihe bomb or the mine became a high mettled steed, bestriding which the Presi- 
dent was to distance in the race of populaiiiy all such mere lackeys as were rode 
by others. There siood, booied and spurred, in blue jacket, red cap, and yellow 
breeches, ihe Exectilive, John Jones holding his boiile, atiendanl Secretaries his 
whip and stirrup, the Posimaster General his bridle; while the trainer in-chief 
(he of the Slate D^'parinient.) stood prepared to lift him into ihe saddle. Mean- 
time, as the Baltimore Conveniion drew nigh, abandoning their o\\ n useil up 
cavalry, aboni him came the veteran Indian slayer of the West, his military rival 
of the Lakes, and others of high pretensions. All looked wiih longing eyes at 
his saddle. All woidd have gladly leapt into it, bin for John Jones and the 
stable boys, who loudly aunounctd that jiisiice di'iuandcd that the owner alone 
of this puive-iaker should stiaddle him ; when lo ! the convt-niion appears with 
a candidate of ilieirown. Tiiey thrust by trainerand all, scat Polk in the saddle, 
slap the horse on liic rump to start him, and bid him go ! And while he hob- 
bles off, the dismniuited Executive stands aghast. The Secieiaiies iire ihimder 
struck; while John and the stable boys protest, in vain, that it is ihe Piesideni's 
hoise, that ihere is cheating going on, ihai this is loo b;id. 

But to reinrn to the oilier great cause of fright, wliiih has so alarmed ihc Sena- 
tor from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Buchanan.) as lo make him overleap his opinions 
as expressed in 1837, a treaty with England that shrdl give her all the trade of 
Texas. It is dilliculi lo conceive why the possibility of this should produce any 
panic. As in the other case, I see no tnanifesiations of ihe presence of such a 
peiil to the minds of those whom it oupht chieHy to affect. Still less can I 
imagine why those should impute it to ihein, or should endeavor to lling iheni 
into a tremor about ii, wlio ihemsehcs niediiaie or desire jiisi about the same 
arrangeuieiiis with Biiiain, as the aiu) of all rational policy, the requisition of 
all constiiuiional right. 

Texas h;is no manufaciures. no inecliauic aits, no moneyed capital to set them 



17 

on foot, no skill formed (o them, no body of working population dependant on 
them for employment. She is, even far beyond any of our Southern Stales, a 
producer of raw material alone. If, then, (o a people like us, of most mixed 
occupations, of climates and soils compelling" them, where the intimate division 
of labor is already in existence, where the power of supplying ourselves with 
almost everything has grown up, vieing, in short, with Europe in no small part of 
the useful arts, and possessing a vast and rapidly swelling internal trade, in com- 
parison with which our foreign shrinks into insignificance : if, I say, to a people 
so situated, free trade with Britain be so gieata good, what is there in ii which 
should so horribly frighten Texas ? If, nevertheless, it is her pleasure, and that 
of her free trade friends, to be so excessively discomposed, I think only a few 
plain considerations are needed to set them at their ease. England, it well ap- 
pears, is not willing to contiact towards Texas any responsibilities, either politi- 
cal or pecuniary. Of that the documents presented to us to prove these designs 
afford proof enough ; and though these papers are far from being such as are fit 
to be relied on for the affirmative question, where they sustain the negative, surely 
they must be accepted. Now, is it in the smallest degree likely that this great, 
far-seeing power, the most eminently practical, the least visionary that the world 
ever saw, can expect to reduce an American and an Anglo-Saxon republic la 
vassalage, by means of a commercial treaty? How long, if it imposed any 
terms oppressive of Texas for the benefit of England, could it be expected to 
last? She does not trust the uncertain faith of Texas now, when she is weak, 
will it be better when she has started up into the vigor of wealth, success, and 
popnlousness, all certain to conie about by the means lent, by the security and 
confidence bestowed ? Her colonies on our continent, alreatly infected with 
radicalism, and endangered by the democrac}^ propagated from our shores, 
threaten every day to fall off from her, are a burden rather than a benefit, and 
cost her much more than they come to. National piide alone induces her ta 
retain them. Is she likely, then, to burn her fingers with new dependancies, 
'planted by us, and reeking with more than Republicanism, more than Democracy, 
with repudiation ? Can she trust men filled with so many antipathies to her in- 
stitutions, or is it possible that any thing short of the last public distress can have 
induced Texas to cherish, in any seriousness, the idea of coming under England's 
monarchical rule? Sad as, in England, is the opinion, unjustly, but somewhat 
naturally, entertained of even the best of us, in what light, I pray you, must she 
look upon people considered by her the winnowings. which the fan of the law 
has blown from our land ? 

But consider the broad eye of English policy is supposed to see every thing. 
Is it probable, then, if she values her West India possessions, that she will ven- 
ture to place in such domestic connexion with them, a source from which will at 
once gush into them every idea most pernicious, most fatal to her power there? 
I can imagine no step more certain sneedily to snatch from her all that the Gulf 
washes, or the waters of the Caribbean sea, instead of giving her any more foot- 
hold on the mainland. These being the views she must take, as to the question 
of her power merely, what will be those in which she must see the thing, as a 
question of her trade ? The advantages to be got, and those to be lost are here, 
it seems to me, easily measured — it is enough to say, that Texas presents to 
English industry, the mart of not above 200,000 inhabitants, in order to dissipate 
all this part of the Texas theory forever. Will Enuland quarrel with the com- 
merce of this coimtry for that market, or such a mark(!t ? If she makes a treaty 
with it, bestowing peculiar privileges, what becotues of all her conventions with 
us, stipulating admission to our productions on the same terms granted to any 
Other?. Has she not like arrangements with every body else ? How. then, will this 



18 

idea of her extending to the little people of Texas peculiar privileges, hold water 
for one moment ? 

1 have thus surveyed, Mr. President, the main questions of our competency to 
acquire Texas,in the manner proposed — of her ihus to dispose of herself — and of 
the form as to either in which the thing is to be clone; together with the most 
immediate points arising incidentally to these. I liave shown that our former 
right to Texas is an error, and how that error arose ; that a long series of national 
acts, originally correct, and irreversible as long as we attempt to preserve the 
slightest character as a people, utterly forbids us to recur to that matter, except as 
an historical one; that Texas can make us no title to herself, not being mistress 
of any thing but a war, and a debt ; and that these, and not Texas, are all we 
shall take under this .treaty, except as much confusion and uproar at home as 
dishonor abroad. Lot me now coiue directly to what the treaty itself sets forth, 
and what the accompanying pieces that form what we are allowed to know of its 
history, substantiate or betray. 

By its title, it is a treaty for the annexation, not the union, of the Republic of 
Texas to that of the United States. Now, what was to hinder it from being an 
annexation of the United States to Texas? Constitutionally, the one is as pos- 
sible as the other, inasmuch as the people have not been consulted about either. 
If her sovereignty, (which is alledged by the fact of our entering into the act 
with her) can be thus extingui.-hed, so, of course can be ours ; for a Slate can 
but be sovereign. In the eye of riglit, its size can make no diHerence; atjd as 
we, not Texas, were the solicitors for the amalgamation, 1 hold that it is rather we 
that should have been annexed than Texas. I need haidly lepeat that as, in a 
Republican government, the sovereignty is in the body of those who are citizens, 
not their mere representatives excrcisinir for them only a momentary and a dele- 
gated power; nothing but the collective will of that people, deliberately given, 
and distinctly ascertained, could extinguish or aliena'e that sovereignty. To the 
reason given some time back, I may add another: that it must be confessed that 
a people is always such when it chooses to be — has always the right of being 
governed as it likes. It is clear, therefore, that it cannot have conveyed away, 
what at its pleastire it has again. But here impossibilit)' lies upon innpossibilily ; 
Texas could not give, we could not take her sovereignty by means of a treaty; 
and if her people, eight years ago, willed to unite her to us, that would not au- 
thorize the present act, for two overwhelming reasons: first, because a past act, 
an act of last year only, an act ,of another occasion, is not valid for any such 
purpose ; and, secondly, because that act authorized a totally difTerent thing, 
nauK'ly, her union with us, as a Stale, not her annexation as a n.ere territory. 
Suiely the high Slate rights doctrinaries who aim at this thing, intent in a most 
extraordinaiy manner on their present object only, utterly oveilook consequences 
not otdy fatal to their own favorite opinions, but really niosi formidable to the 
future safely of r/// government upon our present plans, with our intended limita- 
tions. For smely a foreign State can claim iioiliing at the hands of this Govern- 
ment or Confederation, to which, as a benefit, our own would not be niuch better, 
or at least etpially, enliilecl. Suppose, then, one of our own Slates should, for 
some icason or other, desire to give up her sovereignly, like Texas, for a price? 
Suppose Pennsylvania, with the honorable purpose of paying her debts, should 
do II, we assuming them ? Or suppose, again, what I fear is much less probable, 
that the Slate of Mississippi were to makethesame proffer? Could this Govern- 
ment buy them all out ? Why noi? What should hinder it from lending ihein 
ail money, jis an usurer does lo young spendihrifis, taking mortgage after mort- 
gage, nu.il finally, eaiiiig them np wiih interest, it forecloses upon thetn, and 
buystluiM in? If it can open a shaving shop fur foieign sovereignties, surely it 



19 

can obliffe a brother. If it can speculate in the foreign article, surely it can deal 
in the domestic. 

/ The pre;unljle proceeds (o set forth that the treaty lias been concluded in con- 
rorniiiy wiih the almost unanimous vole of Texas at iheadopiion of her Consli- 
lulion, (18'j6,) and her present equally unanimous wish. Now, I have already 
fehown thai, at best, the first fact was of no import; that, further, it was untrue; 
pnd it is notorious that the second assertion is a mere assumplion; about as valid, 
for a high and authentic purpose like this, as it would he for an election of our 
Chief Magistrate under the forms of the Constitution, to say that John Tyler is 
elected, because John Jones, and two princely youths asseverate, all the while, 
that he is the people's undivided choice. But again, all this, as a statement of 
the motives of tlje treaty is false, because even to Texas the motives of to day, 
are not those of 183G, when her purpose was entirely diflerent ; while the pre- 
tences now set up on our part, had then never been imagined even. 

As if the mcie reiteration of what is false could make it true, the 1st article of 
the treaty goes on to reaffirn all these things, as thus ; '• The Republic of Texas, 
acting in confiumity with the wishes of the people, and of every department of 
its governnrent, cedes to the United Slates all its sovereignties, to be helil by them 
in fall and proper soveieignty." As here, however, with a growing confiilence 
in itself, assertion takes a fuller swing, let us see precisely what this comes to. 
,The "Republic of Texas," as thus conveyed to us, includes all between our 
borders and the Rio Grande. These limits embrace Mexican provinces, of which 
the Senator from Missouri has given a skdfull and accurate account, with his well 
known and accustomed ability. According to the memoir embraced in the offi- 
cial documents of the treaty, they contain a population of probably some 3l)(),()tJt) 
souls, in addition to that of Texas proper. The latter is estimated at from KK),- 
OOD to 201)001) ; but at the former number by their own envoy, G neral H nit, 
in I83r. Now, putting aside, as lost in this bolder stretch of false asseveration, 
the plain fact, that Texas herself has not assented to such a treaty, what have we 
here ? Has Tamaulipas, or Coahuila,or Chiahuahua, or the Eutaw Band, been 
consulted ? ^. As for New Mexico, her accession to the surrender nuist be pre- 
sumed to have been signified to that admirable combination of war, traffi.;, and 
diplomacy, (he Santa Fee expedition ; for that is well known to be tlie latest 
consultation held with that part of the Republic. I should not have su?!pecled, 
from Mr. Kendall's account, that such was precisely the result of the collocpiies 
with that gentle republican, Governor Armijo. Here, then, it strikes me, must 
be said to be from three fifths to three fourths of the " Republic," as we get it, 
who cannot even be pretended to have been even consulted as to this cession ; 
for these are provinces that have never taken any voice in the affairs of Texas, 
for the very simple leason, that neither voluntarily nor by compulsion did they 
ever submit to her sway, or join in her institutions. 

Then foljows a long inventory of many airy public chatties, which we shall no- 
doubt take, when we find them. They souiad very like the enumeration of 
weapons in an indictment for assault and battery, where, from the abundant 
caution of the law, almost every thing — as sticks, stones, staves, and other imple- 
ments of harm, is declared to have been employed, and in fact every thing with 
which it is possible to beat a man. " All ptibhc lots and squares, vacant lands, 
mines, minerals, salt lakes and springs, public edifices, fortifications, barracks, 
pons and haibois, navy and navy yards, docks, magazines, arms, armaments, and 
accoutrements, aichives and public documents, public funti?, debt?, laxps and 
duos unf)ai(l at the time of the exchange of the ratifications of (his treaty-*' All 
(his looks a great deal more like what a nation shouhl ami might have, than any 
thing that Texas posseses. There are saiil lobe marriage contracts, in which the 
bride, though as poor as the beggar's-maid that King Caphilua loved and dressed 



20 

off in borrowed clothes, has castles, hunting-lodges, villas and hotels, with a long 
rent-roll, all in imaginary lands and visionary cities only. It is fit that the biid. 
and the nation should be supposed to have these things, whether she have them 
or not ; they are for her beauty, or her dignity. I fear that, in this pompous 
schedule, the only part we shall ever realize is the last, a very solid body of that 
sort of public wealth which is usually called indebtedness, and a very plentiful 
lack of any thing to pay it with. Of " lots and scpiares" there may be lots, but 
in towns little more thai; ideal. The mines and minerals have not yet been 
worked, through the omission or casually of not being yet discovered ; or if any 
exist, they are surely those of >«'ew xMe.vico, from which the ingots fly, by some 
strange attraction, into a very different treasury. Theie may be in Texas, a 
"suit river;" but I have never heard of her salt lakes. As to her "public edi- 
fices, fortifications, barracks, poits and haibors, navy and navy yards, docks, 
magazines, arms, armamenis and accoutrements," that figure here in architec- 
tural s])Iendor, or make up llit; '■ ])ride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war,'" 
these are siuely put in for the flourish. Now, God foibid, that I should laugh 
at honorable poverty, national or individual. That of Texas is not so. Let her 
repudiated bonds, let the unfortunate dilficulty into which she has plunged a 
brave and honorable South Carolinian, to whom she owes still more in gratitude 
than in money, tell that tale. Is it, at any event, when she is driving a bargain, 
that this long display of titular possessions can be fairly made? Would not the 
plain words, all her " public jnoperiy and domain" have been equally determinate 
and far more modest? And why this long enumeration, unless to catch the 
popular fancy ? 

The next article provides for erectina- Texas into a State as soon as may |j 
be consistent with the principles of the Federal Constitution. In this article lies il 
one of the grand frauds of the whole transaction, as every body knows. It is a 
shallow and a shameless evasion of the difficulties known to auend the bringing 
her in by treaty as a State, a soveieigniy. To avoid these, the name, not the 
thing, is changed, and one-half the matter only is openly done at present; but 
with a care so to stipulate it in this article, that the faith of treaties may be invoked 
in lavor of the very fraud of a treaty, " us soon as may be consistent with the 
Constitution !" JNeed I say, sir, that the benefit of this provision may be claimed 
the instant you ratify this treaty ? The population of Texas would already en- 
title her to one representative in tlie other House, and that is the first and main 
condition to the right of being admitted. Nor was this political evasion the only 
one me.'uit. Another, fully as important in the view of a great part of this body, 
of Congress, and of the nation, was to be accomplished — the admission, not only 
of a foreign Stale int > this Union, but that of a foreign slave State. To the 
latter, it was felt that insuperable objections of feeling lay, in addition to those 
of constitutionality. But, as now done, the constitutional bar is to be got over 
by her consenting for a moment to be co//er/ a territory ; while the slave question 
is silently passed over by the same means. Here, sir, are some 25,001) slaves 
impoited by a treaty, a vast and "Wholesale operation, such as even Cuba and 
Hiazil never witnessed, and as ulleily against our subsisting laws, utterly beyond 
any warrant to the treaty-making j)ower. So I must beg leave to add another 
flausc to my emuueration of points, which prove this tieaty an original nullity, 
and no treaty at all. 

iioth these, sir, are abominable and ilangerous frauds upon the Constitutiou, 
upon the people, and against the fiume peace of the Union, already abimdanlly 
put in jeopardy by questions of this sort. As a Southern man, the citizen of 
a Slate, whose present safely ib iiiands that all the public and national guaran- 
ties be strictly preserved, and maiiiiained to om- subsisting inieresis of this sort; 
as the public agent of such a comumniiy, I will do all that I can to see that no 



21 

injurious hand shall be hiid upon rights within this nation, to which every part 
of it is faithfully pledged. But, sir, I should not seek — the wisely moderate 
Stale to which I belong will not seek — any thing beyond our present good secu- 
rities, far more likely to suffer, than to gain, fro))i any rash disturbance of them, 
under the hazardous idea of extending them. Pray let us hold on to what we 
justly have, and not drop it to catch at a shadow. If we can break tluough the 
Constitution to extend slavery, how are we to expect that like breaches will not 
be made to subvert it? This scheme is one directly and violently to raise up a 
new agitation, that will not fail, and (1 say it with a solemn repugnance) is but 
too probably meant, to exasperate the head long and the extreme, in opposite 
quarters of the confederacy, Id rush into speedy disunion. 

I would not, in a word, Mr. President, seek to extend slavery, even by fair means. 
I know of none, but the assent of the common body of parties to our contract with 
each other. Of these parlies, nothing like this can be asked with any probabili- 
ty of success, nor ever without an adverse probability of awakening resentments, 
distractions, far beyond any good to be accomplished. If, from prudence and 
for peace, I would not now attempt such a thing even fairly, it may be judged 
with what alarm as well as horror I recoil from the thought of a fraud like this, 
aggravating every mischief an hundred fold, and complicating impolicy witli 
dishonor. 

The next article secures all land claims valid under the laws of Texas. Of 
course, if, in the event it should prove to be true, (as it no doubt is to a large 
■extent) that Texas has, for considerotion received, granted her Avhole public 
domain twice over, we shall be bound in equity to the claimants, (now our citi- 
zens.) and to her acts, (now our own,) to make good any deficiency ; and thus 
may have to piece out lier exhausted soil with a broad parcel of our own, per- 
haps as large as the real Texas herself. 

The next provides, substantially, that tee shall give back to Texas what she^ 
apparently, has never given to herself — every sixteenth section of the public 
lands for purposes of education ; that is, one-sixteenth of her entire soil is to re- 
vert to her, or an equivalent somewhere else. 

The next article assumes all the debts and liabilities of Texas, however cre- 
ated. 1 have already shown that, with or wiihout any assumption, we became 
liable for all her engagements, when we look her sovereignty, and that the faith 
she has violated binds us just as much as I'hat she meant to keep. Not only her 
acknowledged, but her repudiated debts, then, are to be paid, and the very stock 
which she has created and sold at, perhaps, but a fifth, or a tenth of the value 
expressed on its face, is to be redeemed at par, with an interest of eight or ten 
per cent. If this provision of the treaty is ratified here, I think I may then pro- 
pose an appropriation to erect, in congenial brass, a great and eternal monument 
to the anii-assumpiionist States and party, that hold it constitutional to assume the 
debts of a foreign Slate, but not of our own. High on its glittering sides shall 
shine many a lofty name of Southern sirict constructionists. The Secretary of 
State shall lop the eminence, as the acknowledged chief of all interpreters. At 
his feet shall blaze the titles of the Senator from South Carolina, and of the fer- 
vid anti-assumpiionist of Mississippi, whose Slate herself will merit a peculiar 
distinction of being much readier to ptiy the debts of Texas than her own. A 
little lower, but somewhat emulous of her honors, nuist be emblazoned the 
names of Illinois and Peniisylv.inia, and their Senators. Alabama and Aikan- 
sas, if not quite so high, will siill be eminent. The New Hampshire Senator, 
now the sole surviving "Northern man wiih Souihern principles," shall lake to 
himself that side of this political mausoleum which looks northward. Those 
votaries of sirict consiruction, those apostles- of anfi assumption, John Jones, 
Thomas Ritchie, and he of the Charleston Mercury, shall daily, at noon and eve, 



22 

lend a devouf band of innocent youilis of pnrt\', nnd virgins of the press, to 
strew flowers nboiit ii and lo hang around ihe garlands of their praise. 

I should like, had I linie, to incniire into ilit- peculiar causes (unexplained in 
even (hat lucid body of papers, called ihe documenis,) which have led to the 
seleciion of a single gendenian lo he inuoduced by name into the benefil.s of 
(he irealy, ro the preuy liide inne of $25U,()()0. What peculiar nieriis of Mr. 
Frederick Dawson, of naliiniore, have placed him so far above all oi her Creditors 
of Texas, I cannot slay lo ask, ihongh I should be glad ihe Senale knew. 

The Gdi article, besides seiiling the forms, A:c., under which liabilities are to 
be ascertairied, provides also, with great discretion, how ihey shall be repudiated. 
By. one general and positive provision, all the couiructs of Texas, as to the rale 
of inteiest on her debt, are set aside, and their evidences, after being ascertained, 
replaced by United Slates bonds at 3 per cent, per annum. But their piesent 
slipidaied rale, as jdeclared by ihe sialemeni of Messrs. Van Zandt and Hender- 
son, is 10. A nice liiile lepudiation this, of only 665 per cent, on the interest. 
Then, on the principal — if the entire ainotmi now in existence is found to ex- 
ceed 10,0l)t),t)()0, the claims aie all lo bt; lateably reduced within that amount. 
Thus, our Governmeiu is, beyond all doubt, making itself directly a party to an 
imperative repucliaiiou of inieri;st, and a contingent spnnging of principal. All 
this, as I have said, is for debts that become our own,' if we nieige the national 
existence of Texas in ours. Bc^forc that act, how can we set aside her contracts 
with other parlies? We had surely no power over ihem. It is only by assum- 
ing ihem that we could take any sort of right overlhem. The repudiation, then, 
is outs, iioi hers; and the more plainly, be,cause she abandons to us all interest 
in the fimd, (^ihe laiul sales.) oui of which they are to be paid : so that it is for 
our profit alone that the repudiation is to be made. 

By ihe next article, the existing Legi.>lative auihorities of Texas, her Execu- 
tive and Adfuinislration are abolished and overthrown, her army ceases lo exist, 
and her fieet that was sold under the hammer ceases; nothing is left of them; 
all is stricken out of being but her judicial olli^ccis and the subordinate l-^xccu- 
tive ones. It is, I piesimie. not preiended that the Governujent of "^rexas is to 
be made to cease at the bidding of the Executive and Senate of this country. 
I have shown thai there was no act of her people that can seriously be pretend- 
ed lo have set her high fiujciiouaries aside ; it can then, only, be their own power 
and discretion that has thus terminated iheir functions in iheir own peisons, and 
transferied those functions lo ihe disposal of ihe United States, and ammlled the 
Constiintion of Texas, that they were sworn to support. If all this is legiii- 
niaie, valid, on one side, so is ii on the other, and we may, therefore, thank our 
Slats if It proves to be Texas, not om.'^elves, which was thus exiinguished. Nei- 
ther Goverjuneni possesses any such Revolutionary powers — neither can subvert, 
annihilate, iiausHn itself, by functionaries of con.siituiioual government created 
for (liferent purposes. 

Attached directly lo the treaty, the main features of which I have thus sur- 
veyed, coini's a document fron) the "^rexan plenipotentiaries, meant to show the 
power their people had given thus to annex Texas. It otdy shows the very reverse, 
inapmiich as it exhibits an authoiiiy for a diHerenl ihing, upon a former occasion, 
as 1 have alieady saiil. That nniboriiy, to the whole extent given, ceased with 
the failure and the abandomneni of ihu eUorl made under it to procure froni Mr. 
Van Uuren's Adminisi ration a union between this couniry and Texas in 1837. 
In lieu of surh a jiopular authority, however, it ofTers the peisonal assurances of 
(he plenipotentiaries that they havi; "ihe most abiding confulence ihat, should 
(he annexation be consumiuated. the same will receive the beany atui lull coq- 
currence of the people of Texas." This,' then, is all we have for the thing. 



23 

The plenipotentiaries next, furnish statements of the extent of the grants made 
of their pubhc domain, and of the condition of their Treasury. Of the former 
of these, it is sufficient to say that it is only vaguely described as a " late report 
of the Commissioner of tlieir Land Office," and was really made in 1841. It 
cannot, then, be in the slightest degree depended on. But, besides, a glance at 
the most recent maps, the last of MitchelTs, will show that vast grants cover the 
whole surface of Texas. Those are laid down upon it, like the names of coun- 
ties on our State maps, and equally serve to designate territorially the wholesoil. 
Besides these, there are great bodies of floating grants and loans, redeemable at 
the option of the holder, in lands to be chosen by him. Such is, in general, I 
apprehend, the real condition of their public lands. 

The Treasury statement is equally delusive. That which is furnished is only 
to the year 1840; for its date is of the I2lh January, 1841. This evidently 
relates only to their acknowledged debts. The repudiated are left out of view, 
and also the issues, said by welliiiformed people to have been made, and put into 
market for just what they would bring, with scarcely a record kept in their Trea- 
sury of such emissions. From the character of many of their fui?ciionaries, few 
doubt that the loosest possible administration of their pecuniary afF.iirs has gene- 
rally prevailed. Certainly, the plenipotentiaries say that " it is known" that 
since " the above date, the revenues of the Government have nearly equalled 
expenditures; so that the debt has not materially increased ; but it is notorious 
that until the present annexation speculation began, Texas scrip was from 3 to 
7 cents in the dollar, and (hat their nayy was latterly sold under execution — facts 
a little decisive, I take it, but even less significant than the following very frank 
or very unguarded avowal, let out in this very document, intended to exhibit to 
advantage the state of their finances. Speaking of the Treasury report, above 
cited, (for 1840,) the plenipotentiaries say, " since the date above referred to, ho 
further gencrcd estimate (of their debts) has been made at the Treasury De- 
partment.'''' These are their own words; and I ask any man to figure to him- 
self, if he can, the state of a Treasury in which, /b;' more than three yeaj's, not 
an estimate even has been attempted of its liabilities! 

Let me now, from these main papers, turn at once (for I must hasten forward) 
to the message itself which conveyed them to ns, sift the rights which it alleges, 
the Slate reasons which it sets forth, and compare it with the further series of 
official or other papers, which make up the history of this negotiation. 

The President, of course, sets up the independence of Texasas so eslahlished 
as to warrant our acting as if the struggle between her and Mexico was at an 
end. He relies for his justification, partly on the length of the contest, partly on 
the failure of Mexico since 1836 to attempt the re contpiest with any serious 
mass of force ; yet, further, on the recognition, by various great Powers, of 
Texas as an independent Government ; then again, on the inhuman character 
which the conflict has assumed; and lastly, on the political necessity imposed 
upon us, by a design in which he considers England busy, to su!)veri our slave 
institution, by means of bringing about emancipation in Texas. I weed scarcely 
say that if the last is a sincere motive, or real justification, it is of a nattue so 
prepondeiaiing as to reduce the others to insignificance, or cast upon them strong 
suspicion of being employed merely to palliate the wrong upon which that ne- 
•cessiiy forces us. JNevenheless, I will consider these several points according to 
their order, not their importance. 

As to the question of the Independence of Texns, a few plain principles of 
conimon sense can settle that, wiihoiit any refereiire lo treaties ornaiional law. 

When the levolt of a country, heretofore dependiMit, takes a moresetilt'd form, 
by its establi.shing a provisional crovermnent of iis own, other na'ions do not 
abandon their neutrality towards the Government from which the insurgents 



24 




really is such. To supply either party, l)y public tiienns, with troops, or ships, 
or amis, or subsidies, is an abandonment of neutrality ; and so is it equally, to 
obtain of eiifier that which is in dispute between them. Precisely in conformi- 
ty wiih these piinciples was the conduct of the Van Buren administration in 
1837, when Te.\as, (after our reco^fuiiiou of her independence, so far as we 
were concerned, so far as we could do ii inoffensively lownrds Mexico,) solicited 
a union with us. The Secretary of State then said, on the pari of our Govern- 
ment : 

"In detprmining with respect to the independence of other countries, the United States 
liave never taken the question of riijht between the contending parties into consid>naiion. — 
They have deemed it a dictate of duty anl policy to decide upon the question as one of fact 
merely. This was the course pursued with respect to Mexico herself. It was adhered to 
when analagous evetits rendered it proper to investigate the question of Texan independence." 

And a little further on, he says: 

" So long as Texas sha'l remain at war, while the United Stales are at peace with her 
adversary, the proposition of the 'I'exan Minister Plenipotentiary necessarily involves the 
question of war wiih that adversary." 

Of like effect, and of authority in some respects still higher, are the following 
sentences from the message, about the same time, of a distinguished Govertior 
of Souili Ciirolina, General McDiitfie, a near kinsman of the honorable Senator, 
(hoiiiih of very different politics. Speaking of the intention of Texas to apply 
for admission into this Confederacy, he says: 

" In my opinion. Congress ought not even to entertain such a proposition, in the present 
state of tlie controversy. If we Mdruil Texas into our Union while Mexico is still waging 
war against that province, with a view tore-establish her supremacy over it, Ave shall, by 
the very aci itself, make ourselves a parly to the war. Nor can we take this step without 
incurring this heavy responsibility, until Mexico herself shall recognize lh*e independence of 
her revolted province." 

Again, a little later, wliat said the Envoy of Texas herself, when moving 
this qtiestion a second fitne, in 181^? The words, considering the importance 
of Ihe sul»jecl, and that this was it.s opening, can pass fur uolhins: short of those 
of Ttxas hetself. Mr. Van Zaiidt writes, on the I4th December, 1842, to our 
Secretary of State, to mge an interposition to stop the war by receiving Texas 
into the Union, and says, distinctly : 

" If Mexico believes herself able to resubjugate Texas, her right to make the effort will not 
be denied," &c. — (Senate Doc. 341, p. 17.) 

This plain principle Mr. VVeb'«;ter copies almost literally into the interpositioi> 
which he accoidingly, on the 31st January following, addresses to Mexico : 

" Mexico has an undoubicd riuht to subjugate Tevas, if she can, so far as other States are 
concerned, by the common and lawful means of war." — vSameDoc. p. 70.) 

In conformity with these same plain facts and principles, Mr. Thompson, our 
Envoy, thus replcdjcs to Mexico, on the I Ith Match following, our observance 
of the duties of a netitial : 

" In obedience to your instruction'--, I then alluded, in the most friendly and respectful 
terms, to the character of the war now going on between Mexico and Tex^s, and told him, 
(Santa Anna,) //)(/< irluls' mir Gor'riiin> nt was ddprminetl Id nl)urve Ih". strictest ni'niralily, 
in thai irnr, it fe t that it was its duty to remonsiraie, in the most respectful manner, with 
both Governments, against prcJatory f rav^. rcallv not war which were now iinilo by both 
Mexico and I exas," 6ic 

Finally, the present St.« i.uny v-i oak-, lu lll^ i- uci ui .ipnl i^m. (>>iiiie do- 



25 

cument, p. 50.) to the British JMIuister, directly admits every ibing in the follow- 
ing avowal, (p. 51 :) 

" It is true the Uniied Ftates, at an early period, recognized the independence of Texas; 
but, in doing so, it is well known that thev but acted in conformity with an established pria- 
ciple to recognize the Government de facto:'' 

The recognition, then, as Mr. Forsyth said, did not enter into any question 
of light, and, as thus iiiiiited, Iwnnd us upcessariiy to the observance of every 
neuiral duty, until that question had been settled between the parties to it; 
while, on the oilier hand, it implied, of course, nothing unfriendly to Mexico. 
The dibtingui?hed Senator from Pennsylvania, who has lately taken a promi- 
nent ptirt in this matter, was therefore wrong, when he resisted in this body 
even the mere recognition of the independence of Texas, as likely to engas^e us 
in war wiih Mexico, and to involve us in national suspicion; for neither of 
these facts vv'ould have followed a mere recognition, as long as we went no 
further. Mr. Buchanan then said, by way of objection to the bare recognition : 

" We can never, with any proper regard for the welfare of our constituents, devote their 
energies and their resources to the cause of planting and sustaining free institutions among 
the people of other nations." 

Again, he said, on the same subject : 

"But let us not, by departing from our settled policy, give rise to the suspicion that we 
have got up a war lor the purpose of wresting Texas from those to whom, under thef<nth nf 
irealifs, it justly belongs. Since the treaty o/1819 with Spain, there can no lunger be any 
doubt but that this province is a part of Mexico.'" 

The citations which I have made from our own high official acts, from a series 
of declarations addressed either directly to Mexico herself, or, when to her oppo- 
nent, none the less pledges to Mexico than repulses to 'J'exas, show beyond dis- 
pute, that when, in last JXovember, her Envoy put in a protest against all that 
the Exectitive was then preparing, and all that he hus since accomplished in 
this treaty, Mexico but repeated to us our own language, but recalled to us our 
own pledi^es to her and the world. We had proclaimed, again and tigain, in 
solemn and decisive forms, that we could not incorporate Texas, (the war yet 

pending between her and Mexico,) without an utter breach of national faith 

without making ourselves directly a party to that war. When, therefore, an 
administration was found abandoned enough to occupy itself with violalin«j- all 
these duties, so often recognized — all these pledges, so often given — what could 
Mexico, for purposes of justice, do more rightful, or what, for purposes of peace 
more necessary, than to give us the notice of the consequences authorized by 
all international law, and as clearly authorized by so many voluntary pledi^es 
of our own 7 She protested then; and how was that protest received ? As 
nothing short of an msult and a threat ! With a singular mixture of audacity 
and fraud, the Executive, through the head of the State Department, turned 
this perfectly legitimate and even necessary notice into a pretended offence, and 
made the simulated wound of its dignity and honor a pretext for the refusal of 
all peaceful and proper assurances. Busily engaged all the while (as we now 
know) in finding the means of carrying into effect, bystirprise, against our own 
people as well as Mexico, this perfidious plan, all the indignation of outrao-ed 
integrity, all the sensibility of stainless truth, were assumed, to cover the trickery 
until its moment of calculated success, and double its turpitude with this inso- 
lent affectation of affronted virtue ! 

Nor were our pledges confined to mere words, however solemn — to declara- 
tions, however sacredly binding: we carried into an act of the hig^hest nature 
as a tie, a bond of faith still more peculiar. We put in our mediation, as a 
friendly, an impartial, and a humane power, to stay the strife on foot, to brino- 



26 

it to a safe and honorable conclusion for both parlies : and it is while the mat- 
ter has thus stood suspended in pari by our intercession — while Mexico, trusting 
to our honor, which should always be a safe reliance, exchanges arms ft»r ne- 
gotiation — that our President secretly sets on fool a tmffic with her opponent, 
and presently, when the bargain is made, alleges for our justification that very 
truce which had been granted, in part, at our intervention ! Sir, a more infa- 
mous fraud, under the mask of amity, was never committed. Could we sanc- 
tion it here, the name of '^Pt/iiic Faith,'' so long the by-word of the earth, or 
Ligurian or Numidian clupliiiiy, so much the transmitted abhorrence of man- 
kind, wherever not mere oath breakers, will grow honorable and fair beside our 
own ; for this, I insist, is a crime without even a single bad example of other 
nations, of its kind, to countenance it, to keep company with it in ignominious 
fellowship. Not even in Texan breasts does the dishonest thought of such 
viHainous collusion seem to have entered, but by suggestion from our State 
Department. It is thence that (he lesson of iniquity is darkly breathed through 
Mr. Murphy into President Houstoirs ear, in the execrable exhortation which 
may be found in the despatch of January iOth, (Doc. 341, p. 47.) It is in the 
followitig strain that those speaking in the name of this country, after drawing 
the parties into an arnnstice, endeavor to work one of them up to making the 
very negotiation we have meditated, an utter fraud for our benefit: 

"The pending negoliation with Mexico ought not to present any difllculty, unless Texas 
is prepared to go back again under the dominion of that power. As it is certain she will 
not consent to this, under any possible circu:nstances, the result of that negotiation cannot 
affect unfavorably the proposition of annexation to this country. If Mexico should acknow- 
ledge the independence of Texas, then Texas will have an undisputed right to dispose of 
herself as she pleases; and if Mexico should refuse that acknowledgment, Texas will the 
viore need (he proleclinn which the United Stales rww offers. She can require nothing more, 
in this last event, than that the United States shall take upon themselves the adjustment of 
her difficulties with Mexico," 

In every mediation, the powers interposing their good offices can surely be 
held to nothing less than a pledge to each of the parties, that the mediator be- 
lieves both sincere in their intentions, and ihai the mediation shall not be turned 
into a fraud upon either. Not a little, indeed, is the mediator bound, should 
fraud ensue, to aid in punishing the party so abusing the good office done. If, 
as in this case, there be seveial mediators, then all of these are bound to a mutual 
enforcement of ^oo<://«i7/t, and lo sustain against any serious wrong the party 
made to suffer by perfidy in the negotiation. Such is the position, as full of 
danger as disgrace, in which the Executive has ventured to place us. We, 
one of the mediators, are found contriving the ruin of one of the parties, and for 
this purpose persuading the other not to regard the negotiation on foot ; telling 
him that it cannot possibly come to anything — that he can't be worsted, there- 
fore, and may be bettered, by conducting it without any sincerity ! 

Nor, in the shameful management of this business, has the dignity, the self- 
respect of our country been less prostituted than its morality. Mark the despi- 
cable wheedling with which the ExecutiV'C approaches the Government of 
Texas ! — the cringes, the congees, the coaxings, wiih which we are made to seek 
to propitiate its favors ! Hear how our Government is made to whine and 
supplicate : 

"The failure of the proposition heretofore made by Texas for admission into our Union, 
should not be allowed to influence her ))rescnt course. At that time, the question was not 
understood in this country. It had not been canvassed, even by leading politicians, much 
less by the people at large, and the ''onsequenccs dependent upon it were not then develop- 
ed as they now are. If the proposition could have been placed at that time in the light m 
which it is now seen, there would have been no hesitation upon the subject. Indeed, it was 
then regarded rather as a qucsiion of lime than anythini'^ else; for I am well assured that a 
majority of the people of this country have always considered the annexation of Texas to 



27 

their ter;itory as an event that mvs/ happen, sooner or later. At all events, no other ques- 
tion can grow out of the failure of ilie first propositi m than one of mere etiquette or national 
self-respect. I have anticipated and provided lor this Supposing that 'I'exas might feel 
some reluctance to renew a proposiiion which had been once rejected, I have invited her, 
through her Charge at U asliingion, to enier inio negotiations upjri the subject." 

Every body understands that this Treaiy has been shaped for individual aim? alone ; that 
its moving cause was a desperate Hresid^niinl siiecitLitliun ; that its main agents were the 
gamblers and brokers of the bankrupt finances and fraudulent land grants of 'I'exas. — 
'J h rough legitimate and sober negotiation, necessarily deliberate and quiet in its movements, 
nothing could be done rash enougli, extravagant enough, nor noisy enough, to be brouo;ht to 
bear, in popular agitation, upon the Baltimore Demociatic Convention, and, through its de- 
cision, upon the next Presidential election. In this one great aim, all public purposes were 
forgotten. For this, we were to take, not the jusiesi, nor the most feasible method, but the 
suddenest. 'I hat might c^iainly, in the end, plunge us in endless difficulties, disaster, dis- 
honor — every thing most id be deplored; but all these, though speedy effects, would be 
tardy enough only to injure the Un on after they had served the momentary purpose of the 
President yet again to b,e. 'I heir fatal consequences weie at least not swift enough to arrive 
before the struggle in the Democratic Convention. 

Such being the great ruling aim, of course the subordinate questions were to take that 
form which would best suit those vvho were likeliest to lend to the plan the animated, the 
vigorous, the vehement support of strong individual interest, not the mere affected fervor of 
patriotism. Next to the mighty electioneering interest came, therefore, in the treaiy, what- 
ever could enlist the zeal, by enlisting the cupidity of that great and wide spread body of 
adventurous speculators, who were dipped deep in Texas lands or Texas bonds. 

I p.iss, however, to other things. Having shown that rightfully, this Government could 
not, pending a war, step in to decide between two States the subject of the dispute, (which 
is here the right to Texas,) and that we had so declared in every form, up to the time when 
this intrigue and fraud was set on foot. 1 will next show that, in many parts of this cor- 
respondence, there are the most direct and decisive contradictions to the President's mere 
assumption and allegation, that Texas is able to wiihsiaud Mexico, that Texas has obtained 
a positive and permanent independence. 

'J'hat fact or assumption, is abundantly disproved by evpry circumstance in her position, 
by a great part of what the Pr si ent urges, atid especially by the alarm which he spreads 
of the imperative necessity of acting " r/o«'," because Texas must otherwise be driven upoa 
very hard terms, and at once, into the arms of some European power. But what foreign 
power, having trea ies with Mexico, would be faithless enough to deal with 'J'exas as our 
President has done ? In the very message itself that accompanies the treaty, the President 
says, " I> cannoi be denied that I'exas is greatly depressed in her energies by the long pro- 
tracted war with Mexico. Under these circumstances, it is but natural that she should seek 
for safety, and repose under the protection of some stronger power." Yet, we are told, this 
treaty does not njake war by giving that protection and repose. Again he says, " I repeat, 
the Executive saw Texas in a state of almost hopeless exhaustion." What exhaustion ? 
That occasioned by the pendins war with Mexico, which we are now asked to assume, in 
direct violation of our treaty of peace and amity with Mexico, and thereby to disgrace the 
United States in the eyes of the civilized world. I cannot, and I will not, advise'and con- 
sent to the rat fication of a treaty for any such purpose, or one attended by such consequen- 
ces. Were I to da so, with my views, I should be laithless to myself, to my constituents, to 
my country and my God. 

What says Mr. Secretary Upshur, in the very outset of this business in his letter of the 8ih 
August last ? " Pressed by an unrelenting army on her borders, her treasury exhausted, and 
her credit almost destroyed, Texas is in a condition to need the support of other nations, and 
to obtain it upon terms of great hardship, and many sacrifices to herself." On this subject, 
our Minister in Texas, says, " Inasmuch as the commissioners of Texas, now in Mexico, in 
treaiy or negotiation touchmg an nrmislice, are supposed not to have concluded their labors, 
and it is clear to the President of Texas, that so soon as this negotiation in relation to annexa- 
tion is known to the Government of Mexico, all negotiation on that, and all other questions 
between Texas arid Mexico will cease, and that the President of Mexico will instantly com- 
mence active hostilities against 'lexas, which Texas is wholly unprepared, by sea or land, to 
resin.'" 

I presume no one will think it necessary to call on me for further proofs, that it was per- 
fectly well known to the Executive that Texas is incapable of defending herself; that her 
Independence was merely nominal ; that her condition is now far more precarious than in 
1837; that she has progressively grown weaker since then, and Mexico stronger; and that, 
in very truth, her Independence, which was the gilt of the individual aid and sympathy of 



28 

our citizens, ceases the moment she shall no longer be upheld by the hope of help from the 
T'niled States. 

To take the measure of the credulity of folks like these, especially when their wishes 
and designs come to the help of their belief, may seem somewhat rash ; but still as I do not 
know that they have eaten of that plant which was said of old to make men mad, I must 
hold it utterly out of the question to suppose that they can have swallowed all this stuff 
about Mr. Andrews. Certainly, even the Secretary ot Slate, who first seized upon the 
thing, saw full well the extreme nonsense of it, in one of its main points; and, in remarking 
upon Jt in his letter to Mr. Murphy of the Sth August last, after repeating the statement of 
the " private citizen of Maryland," he admits, in the very oatset, " that there is some diffi- 
culty in comprehending the terms of the proposition as stated," which is as good as to say 
that it is nonsense. And so it surely is ; lor what is the plan ? " That an English compa- 
ny should be raised, and pay Texas for her slaves." Here one would think was the end of 
the bargain ; for when equivalents are to be interchanged, wha#more is to be done ? Texas 
here would give up her slaves, and the English association its money — so one would say. 
But this is far from being the result ; for '1 exas has paid for the money, thus far, only ia 
slaves ; whereas she is to pay over again in lands ! Nor is that all; when she has thus 
paid twice over, it 13 but a loan after all ; and the English Government is to aid the third 
operation, to come in as a guarantee of the inicrest ! Of course, then, the principle still 
remains against Texas as a debt ! Well might the Secretary confess that there were some 
obscurities in the plan ! Yet that is far from hindering his blazing out upon it, and making 
it not merely the corner-stone, but the entire foundation of a mighty mtional affair. Nor 
does it become a whit more rational, in the corrected version which Mr. Murphy under- 
takes to give. Id it, again, the Texans are first to give their slaves to the full value of a 
loan, and then to grant, in addition, a vast amount of lands, so large as to form a future fund 
for the abolition of slavery all over the United Stales ! The main difference which he 
makes is, that the British Government was to guarant'^'e, not Texas, but the punctuality of 
her own citizens; and really I do not see that there was any thing very alarming in that, 
though much extremely improbable. Such is this strange tale; and though, as 1 have said, 
the Secretary evidently sees its folly, yet what does he do y Inquire into it ? Not at all. 
Resort to th« British Government for explanations ? By no means. Instantly, a letter full 
of simulated alarms is written to Mr. Murphy. To the English Minister here, or to his 
court, not a word is said, not a syllable to Mr. Everett, until just one month and twenty 
days after the first letter to Mr. Murphy, ihe overture to the whole opera that has be n sung 
us since, and in which (as I am told is usual in overtures) ihe rudiments, or what musicians 
call the motives of the whole peice may be found. This idle ;ale, then, discredited by him- 
self, is made, with not the smallest attempt to fathom it, the basis of all these proceedings. 
It is not till fifty-oae days afterwards, the 2Sth September, that Mr. Everett is di ectf^d to 
look into the aflair ; and on the 16lh October, just eighteen days after that, when yet Mr. 
Everett could but just have got the despatch, we learn, from the note to Mr. Van Zandt, 
that the Executive, in view of " recent occu rencet in Europe,'''' had made up his mind 
10 invite Texas, in all haste, to be annexed to the United States! Meantime, with all 
his precautions not to diminish, by inquiry, the small pretences on which he has seized, 
the Executive has got some information on the subject. He has learnt by Mr. Murphy's 
letter of the 24lh vSeptember, that Mr. Andrews had been driven out of Texas bv its popu- 
lace, as soon as ihey heard of what he had been about, and the envoy himself expressly 
entitles the whole ati'air, " the rtdiciilous transaction j layed off in London." Nor, indeed, 
did Mr. Upshur himself attach any real consequence to it ; for in his despatch on the sub- 
ject to our Minister at Mexico, on the 18th November, he directly admits that there is no 
proof of any English design such as he was not only imputing, but acting upon ; for he says, 
" I have 7io sufficient reason to suppose that England desirev to acquire it, {Texas,) hut the 
subject in all ils hearings is of deep interest to the United States." Thus, sir, disappears, 
before a little scrutiny, all these phantoms of English abolition in Texas. Nothing re- 
mains of them but a parliamentary tlourish of a man of no high repute in England, Lord 
Brougham, some ijeneral declarations by the Premier, such as Premiers must always make 
when popularity demands it, and the frank avowal of Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Everett, that 
the Government had been solicited to stand guarantee to Texas, on a loan offered by the 
Abolition society, but had refused ; and that it had suggested to Mexico to connect the ad- 
mission of the Independence of Texas with the abolition of slavery there; but that Mexico 
had refused to listen to the suggestion, and that it had not, therefore, been renewed. 

I take it, therefore, that all this official history of the motives and the rise of this proceed- 
ing is entirely false, meant but to mislead. Nor are we without proof of the fact, a great 
deal more substantial than the I'xecutive concludes treatie.«, sends out military and uavai 
forces, and puts us in a state ot war upon. In other times, th.il which I am about to cite, 
however well shown by facts to bo authentic, would scarcely, from its mere form (a news- 



29 

paper communicatien) have been brought into the Senate, but now things infinitely less fit 
to be produced are brought here upon the gravest occasion, and I surely need not hesitate 
to give what I take to he tiie true secret history of this Texas treaty. 

An annexation meeting was lately attempted in the venerable town of Williamsburg, 
Virginia, the capital in some sort of the former judicial circuit of the original negotiator 
of this treaty. At it, among others, appeared Judge (now Professor) Beverly Tucker, of 
William and Mary, whose extreme intimacy and whose close coincidence of political opin- 
ions and purposes with Mr. Upshur, various members ef this body perfectly understand. 
Ihe Professor, upon this occasion, entered into a recital of the true origin of this matter, 
claiming himself to have set it on foot. The outline of what he told has been reported and 
publshed, about two weeks since, in the Richmond Whitr. It is no dpubt faithful, since 
though exceptions have been subsequently sent in and published to other parts of the re- 
port, the fidelity of this portion of it remains unimpeached. An abstract is as follows : 

" Having first avowed liis intimate acquaintance with this whole sulyect, and that he possessed ■peculiar 
opportunities for being informed upon it, he slated that the first proposition for annexation was made to 
hmi, and by him next made to the late distinguisiied Secretary of Stale, Judge Upshur. He stated that he 
owned a large tract of land in Texas, and one half of about 60 slaves, m partnership with a certain gentle- 
man there (name not recollected) of wliom he spoke in the highest terms ; that this gentleman, in a letter 
written some time in the year 1843, mentioned the subject of arniexing U'exas to the American Union; that 
he (Professor T) immediately caught the idea and at once opened the sul)ject to his friend Judge Upshur ; that 
Judge U. as eagerly tool; hold of an idea, declaring in a private letter that he was the only man in the Union 
who could do the thing — that he could show the iNorthern people that annexation was their interest, and as 
this was the weak point of a Yankee, there could be no difficulty in reconciling the Yankees to annexation ; 
but if I his could not be done, let things come to the worst. These facis were given from priva e letters 
which had passed between Professor Tucker and Judge ITpshur, and was communicated with egotistical 
complaisance and evident pride, as if the communicator was de.sirous to have the world know that he and 
his friends were alone entitled to the glory of starting this great project of annexation I 

" I mu^t state another fact which wiil illustrate the spirit with whicli thi> matter was undertaken by one 
of the distinguished actors in it, the country has a right to know it. Professor 'J'ucker stated among other 
things of a like character, that Judge Upshur had declared that if he could find one man in Congress with 
'firmness enough, he would, at the next session of Congress, bring things to a direct issue between the 
ISorth and the South." 

This latter part, it must be confessed, smacks not a little of those resolutions from Beau- 
fort, South Carolina, which all have read with astonishment and pain, and with the open 
declarations of many of the leading presses of the South Carolina party, especially their or- 
gan here, which has declared that Texas was to be preferred to the Union. Allow me to 
examine that position for them, and to see what a new Southern Confederacy, founding its 
existence on an act of rapine like this, and on a violent disruption of its previous national 
ties, would be. 

Let us suppose, for a moment, that what cannot well happen without a violent convulsion 
is nevertheless brought about without any, and that a separate Confederacy quietly estab- 
lishes itself through all the Elates West and South, to the Ohio. The good which is to 
follow for its people shall be, lor the sake of argument, security to slave institutions at laro-e. 
Free Trade, the opening to migration of a new, a fertile, and a highly genial region, and'ati 
advanced value of slave property, as the consequence of all, but of the last especially. Let 
us see how these causes will work. 

If slaves advance in price, that cannot be in countries of exhausted soil, already stocked 
with them, or in those where, from climate, the sugar and cotton culture cannot be carried 

on in competition with the rich soils in the lower valley of the Mississippi and beyond. 

They will, then, only rise in price in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Geor- 
gia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, because they will be sold to be carried away. And as a rise 
in their value will make a larger capital necessary to carry on planting where it is already 
unprofitable, of course this latter cause will hasten their rapid transfer South, by adding to 
the cost with which slave labor must be carried on North. 

They will be swept off, then, in but a short time, and the very States where this scheme 
pretends to secure the permanence of slave property will be stripped, within four or five 
years, of all slave property whatever. With them will go a large body of their masters, 
nearly all averse in the extreme to turn wholesale slave-sellers, and attracted by the cheap 
lands and large profits of the new country. Such numbers will probably yield to these in- 
ducements, that, from some parts of Virginia, a great portion of North Carolina, and nearly 
all South Carolina and Georgia, except the rice lands, it will be a migration almost en masse, 
and hardly any will remain that can get away. 

Thus, then, by a speedy change in the labor and property of the seven States I have men- 
tioned, they will take just the same relation to the slave interest south-west of them as 
Pennsylvania and the North now bear to the planting States ; and abolition, sure to exist 
where there are no slaves, will occupy the northern, and plague and threaten the Southern,. 
part of the new Confederacy, just as of old. In the great tract thus abandoned by much of 
Us proprietary, and more of its laboring population, lands must of course sink prodigiously 



30 

in valu*^. At last, for want of purchasers, many of them will be abandoned by their own- 
ers, one hnlf whose slaves alone will, upon lands bought in Texas with the other half, make 
far better crops than nil on the worn and ill-used soil they now exhaust raiher than culli' 
vate. Nor is this all: another very serious cause of depreciation will act. In the greater 
part of the Southern States, there is a heavy public debt. On a diminished population and 
depreciated properly, that debt (which even now they can hardly provide lor; will fall with 
a terrible weiirht of taxes; and these will operate strongly lo induce fresh migration into 
a new country who«e debt has been assumed, and where there will be light taxes only. — 
This efftct cannot but happen as to Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, my own 
Stale, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. 

There may, in a word, be benefiis in ihe plan to 'i'exas — very great benefits; but they 
"will be such as, to fill her veins, will drain the very life-blood of most of ihe present fc'ouih- 
ern States There may be advantages to those who are to break up and to leave their native 
communities; but to those who remain and cling faithfully to them, the results will be de- 
plorable Property v\ill decline; cultivation will cease in iis main branches; new objects 
and methods of tillage, new forms of industry, will have to be sought ; all improvement will 
cease; the whole society will go backward lor a time; and every thing, in a word, will de- 
cline, except taxes, and perhaps repudiation. 

From this changed order of things, what relief will Free Trade bring, where the staples 
thai bred the desire of it have ceased to be grown in these nearer Southern Slates ? They 
will be planting Slates no longer; and their soil and climate fit them lilile for farra- 
ihg, for grazing, or for grain-growing. Producing no longer anyiliing for exportation, 
what sort of a boon will Free Trade be to them ? h strikes me that it will be not a little 
like a present of mustard to a man who has no meat, or ruffles to one without a shirt. But, 
sir, to them, in such a Confederacy, yet another condition of things must ensue. In the 
States which 1 have described, in the necessiiies imposed by their position, it is among them 
that manufactures must sprinsr up, as the most profitable employment. In this, then, agaia, 
they will occupy, as in regard to slavery, the very same relation to the States beyond ihem 
as New England now does lo the South. The existing sectional opposition of interests will 
thus start up afresh between the extremeiies of the new league; and the present Fiee 
Trade men (including some of the distinguished gentlemen whom I see around me,) will, 
unless they, in the meaniime, have gone to Texas, become violent advocates ol a protective 
lariff — unabated enemies of Free Trade. 

Alieady, sir, from the causes I have mentioned, acting only with less intensity, this very 
state of things is coming about. Maryland is already a Tariff State ; Virginia, North Caro- 
lina, and Georgia, are rapidly becoming so; my own Slate and Kentucky have shown how 
they regard that policy. What I have said is but the history of what we have seen and are 
seeing, the facts on !y compressed, by more sudden and stronger causes, into a few years' space. 

Such and so conclusive are ihe economical, the pecuniary objections to this scheme ot 
Southern Confederacy : but there is, further, a political, I might almost say a physical diffi- 
culty, of which these statesmen have not considered, though it is not less obvious than it is 
insuperable. ISear its very centre, their intended territory is crossed by a mighty valley, 
itsel , at no distant day, an empire. Do ihey expect to bridle, with what will be compara- 
tively but a little .Atlantic border, that wide and powerful region ? Do they think to give 
law to the entire Mississippi, by seizing upon lis mouth i Sir, the race thai possesses that 
great stream, is not one, in point of either spirit or strength, to be tamed to the will of any 
builder of political castles in the air, that thinks, at a word, to lock them in from the sea. 
That vast valK'y must have one common social destiny ; nor will the arrangements which 
schemers make, in South Carolina or Texas, at their ease, pluck away from the Great West 
iis passway abroad, and reduce it to dependence. No I I he strong do not follow the for- 
tunes of the weak ; and if the one or the o'her is to submit, the Great West is much more 
like to give the law lo this new realm, than to receive the law from it. I have shown what 
conserjuences, what new social arrangements, this entire plan would work; how surely it 
must empty ol all their slave population, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and partof Alaba- 
bama. Now will these, after having been, by the very execution of this scheme, converted 
into free States, and will the many and populous countries behind them, consent to be a mere 
appendage to a league like this ? Never, sir I The entire valley, 1 repeat, must ever have 
a common political destiny, lis natural ties, and thsoe of habit and feeling, bind it to this 
Union. If "here is ever lo be a Southern Confederacy, it cannot stretch across to Texas, but 
must be girdled in by the Mississippi. Such a thing, agitators and speculators may talk of; 
but I do not think any man here will live to see it ; and 1 am sure, if he does, he will live to 
see troubles, disasters, conflicts ending but in mutual injury, misfortune, and misery, which 
will make him deplore that he has lived so long. 

I think 1 have thus shown what will be the ."special benefits, the benefits to the slave 
States as they now are, which this thing promises; that it will transfer a large partof 



31 

their population and wealth ; that it will break down the value of their lands; that it will 
add heavily to taxation ; that it will revolutionize property and pursuits ; that as it will only 
shift the slave region further South, and convert as large a space into free States as it adds 
of slave territory, it will leave the very interest for which all this is to be done, still weaker 
than before; that if dismemberment, which 1 regret to say seems to me clearly in the con- 
templation of a part of these political projectors, ensues, it will inevitably reproduce on a 
smaller theatre the same questions of protection and of abolition, the same sectional strife, 
•which, in an evil hour, has bred the disaffection that urges men to this design ; that if such 
dismemberment come, it would not quietly stretch across to Texas ; that a war for the low- 
er Mississippi would probably follow : and now let me add, that I see no possible event from 
such a war, but that the new Confederacy, to sustain itself against the superior force of the 
rest of the Union, must do precisely what we are told Texas is about to do, and in this very 
prudent plan for the permanent security of slavery, cast itself for protection upon that very 
foreign power, whose alarming designs of abolition are made the great bugbear to frighten 
us into the jaws of this plan, and drive us, by terror, into crime and shame. 

But advantages of a more general nature are alleged, such as will benefit i he whole Union. 
They tell us that it will give us a new and a noble territory; that its peopling will offer a 
fresh mart for the manufactures of the North, the provisions of the West, and additional em- 
ployment for our Eastern shipping ; that it will add to our military security ; that it will 
prevent smuggling; that it will afford scope for the illimitable Anglo-Saxon propensity to 
scatter, and to get more land ; that it will promote the diffusion of our beneficent principles, 
and, as General Jackson expresses it, " extend the area of Freedom." Wore all these things 
true, I should still refuse to seize such advantages at the price of national dishonor which 
we are to pay for them. I should still, under my special duty to ray own State, and to ma- 
ny others, vote against a measure which will deeply injure them. The Union is well as it 
is, and has much greater need to govern itself well, to manage wise'y what it has, than to 
call upon a large part of it to submit to a grievious loss with the object of merely extending 
our territory. 

All know, sir, what a deplorable system of farming that is, where the landholder grasps at 
more than he can employ, cultivating most wretchedly a large surface, while the skilful til- 
lage of but half as much would, with the same labor, yield him a larger crop, and give him 
an improving soil, instead of one growing every day worse. This individual propensity, long 
the misfortune of our husbandmen, is now rapidly correcting itself; and so will soon do, I 
trust, that kindred national rage for wide, rather than well- managed possessions, which men 
have largely counted on, in calculating the popularity of this attempt. 

If extent of possessions is to stand to us in the place of public honor, and beneficence antl 
wisdom of sway, still we must yield in that species of glory to Russia, whose arbitrary rule 
covers a far wider surface of misgovernment. Nor shall we yet at all equai Tamerlain or 
Grhengis Khan, who had the honor of reducing under their absolute domain still broader 
tracts. Spain herself, whom we now so despise, once held in fee almost a third of the known 
world. Her thirst for misused dominion was as unscrupulous as ours can aspire to be; her 
enterprize as active; her military spirit far higher. What, then, is to assure us, treading 
the same career, from the same, or a yet speedier fate ? 'There are surely simple lessons in 
these things, which every citizen ol a land like this, where all order is but the result of in- 
telligence, should have learnt — that there is more genuine gratness in governing wisely even 
a narrow territory, than in stretching ever so widely, a cruel, an unjust, or an imcorapetens 
dominion, that only acquires, but knows not how to rule, to benefit. What is a mere em- 
pire of disorder, compacted together by none of the true arts of sway. It is preparing buJ 
a speedier downfall for all that we have of good, or right or happy. Already we have cast 
the wude foundations of what, if we persevere in the sober and steadfast, and sure greatness- 
before us, must rapidly become the noblest government that the earth has ever seen. Are 
we to abandon the brightness, the certainty of a public destiny like that before us, for a 
scheme as wicked as it is wild ; that, to compensate for the general abhorrence with which 
it will turn the eyes of all nations upon us, offers us no probability but that of earlier dis- 
ruption, and decay? In all the past, history has presented one uniform truth — that govern- 
ments must be oppressive somewhat in proportion to their extent. Already fierce divisions^ 
conflicts of interest the most threatening, warn us to keep within our present limits, and, at 
least, before we add to them, to compose, to consolidate, to unite. At this instant, the very 
men who would teach us to dream this sad and perilous vision of a greatness without honor 
or prudence or need, are many of them intent on demolishing the very grandeur to which 
they invite you. It is disunion that beckons on to this scheme of rapacity : you are to 
plunder, that disunion may possess ; you are to steal, that it may receive ; you are foully and 
faithlessly to wrest Texas from Mexico, in order that disunion may be furnished with a 
broader and surer basis for a new confederacy. These men tell us tl^at they themselves 
groan under the curse of this governnient ; and in the same breath, that they pant to impart 




qO III II III II I 1 II 

*^^ 014 645 487 2 

its blessings to others ; they rave of England, and her terrible designs ; and what are these 
des gns? Apparenily nothing worse than their own summuTit bonuw, F'ree Trade, the acme 
of ail wise policy I But if tiie embrace of England be so terrible, why seek a seperatioa 
which must fling them at once into her arm-' ? I remember too well the day when a direct 
dissociation trom us, a direct association with England, gave them any thing but alarm, the 
days of nullification; nor have their thoughts changed since then, if their language inter- 
prets them. As little can I trust their promised advantages, in the new region, lor our 
manufacturers, our provision trade, or our navigation, Texas, they design as a new argu- 
ment of the Free Trade region, an addition of anti-tariff votes. What will the consump- 
tion of its present population of not 150,000 add to our trade ? And its augmented popula- 
tion will consist of but our own citizens, whom we already supply. As to the provision 
trade, they themselves boast that the upper regions of that country are fit only lor stock 
raising; so that it is likelier lobe the rival of Kentucky and Ohio abroad, than their cus- 
tomer at home. If the carrying of its cotton and sugar is to employ our shipping, then it 
must be at the expense of a great overproduction of the first of those articles, with which 
we now glut the market of ilie world. In short, sir, I see nothing but what is utterly falla- 
cious in the object, and utterly bad and disgraceful in the method. 'Jhe entire plan is a 
complication of rapine, of impolicy, and of imposture, such as 1 had trusted never to see 
presented for public favor in this country, by any that presumed to set themselves up as the 
guides and the lights of this nation. 

To Texas herself, meantime, sir, I give, as I have ever given, my warm sympathies in 
her brave struggle for the highest privilege to which a people can rise — independence. I 
acknowledge the kindred blood that runs in the veins of her people. Most gladly would I 
see her free; but free by her own arms, the only sure, the bnly noble way to freedom, such 
as our common forefathers trod, i have no confidence in any liberty that is the gift of 
others, and not wrought out by the good right hands of the free themselves. Even them, 
sir, the successful battle field may have won, but something yet nobler than valor is neces- 
sary to keep the bright attainment, a spirit as calm, as right, as wise, as pure, as order-loving 
as it is brave, and that knows how to conquer what is far more difficult to subdue than any 
foe without— the foe within, the wild tendency to misrule, to faction, to disorders that shake 
or disgrace the State, to a rage of personal selfishness or corruption that heeds no claim of 
country, to a liberty that knows little of private morality, and nothing of that true public 
spirit without which freedom is but a letting loose of every man's hand against the rest, in 
the ignoble anarchy of parties intent only on pillaging the Stale, and of leaders without ca- 
pacity and without the thought to govern any thing but a caucus. 

Most gladly, then, were there no such things as national honor or faith — were treaties 
but so much waste paper — were Constitutions as idle within as the great rules between 
people and people empty without, would 1 assist Texas in her struggle. She has ray re- 
spects, and my good wishes, in honor of many men reallv woble and brave, whom 1 know to 
have engaged in it. I yield them my sincere sympathies and best wishes ; but I can, at 
present, yield them nothing more. I will not set my feelings above an honest discharge of 
my duties. I will n'>t, out of kindness to Texas, trample on all the solemn obligations 
which we owe to faith, to peace,, to justice, to the Constitution, to this Union itself, to the 
principles that are to sustain it, and to its people. I pretend not, however, sir, to that pro- 
phetic skill of politics which can settle questions like this for all lime to come. My humble 
effort at statesmanship is but to reach, and prudently to resolve, the question now to be acted 
on. These things may take another form. Annexation may, at some day, assume a shape 
neither pe ilous nor dishonorable, nor coupled with any of those sectional dissentions, or de- 
signs which would now deter nie from it. It may present itself, and probably will, as a 
question of expediency alone. Should it so come, while I have any public part to take on it, 
I will, as now, endeavor calmly to examine all the attendant circumstances, and lo guide 
myself in action by them, and the wishes of the people 1 represent. With giving my vote 
againsi ratifying the present treaty, ray present duty on that subject will be performed. 



